Direct Multi-Fidelity Integration of 3D CFD Models in a Gas Turbine with Fully Coupled Zooming Method

Abstract

Multi-fidelity simulation improves the simulation accuracy and captures more detailed information about aero engines under limited computing resources, which is implemented by coupling different levels of modeling and simulation with numerical zooming methods. However, there is an obvious problem in traditional zooming methods such as the iterative coupled zooming method or mini-map method that both the convergence and accuracy are highly dependent on the component general characteristic maps. Based on the investigation of a micro gas turbine, a direct and accurate fully coupled zooming method is developed, which directly embeds the 3D CFD compressor and turbine model into a 0D component-level model without component general characteristics maps. Then, the fully coupled zooming method is compared with the traditional 0D component-level model methods in terms of the throttle characteristics of the micro gas turbine, and the experimental data of the ground test is performed to verify the effectiveness of the fully coupled zooming methods. The results indicate that the fully coupled zooming method matches well with the test data than traditional 0D component-level model methods.