Robust Design Optimization Applied to a High Pressure Turbine Blade Based on Surrogate Modelling Techniques

Abstract

To achieve reverse objectives in engine design, advanced modelling and analysis methods are among the key research technologies. In the presented work, a robust design optimization of a first stage high pressure turbine blade has been carried out. This blade derives from a current production of a Rolls-Royce aero engine. The motivation of this work is to show that the methodology of robust design optimization can be applied to high pressure turbine blades. A fully automated workflow, which encapsulated the integral blade design and analysis process, has been used. The main workflow objective is a representative life value of the external surface of the blade. In addition, the workflow enables the engineering uses to consider sub objectives like mass, efficiency and life at critical locations of the blade. These can also be taken into account in the multi-objective robust design optimization. This research also focuses on the use of surrogate models, with attention to the delivery of a physically correct result. For this purpose, the validation of the applied methods has a huge significance and a toolbox was created to generate and evaluate the quality of the surrogate models. In the present case sixteen geometry parameters were considered. In order to show that this methodology is not limited to geometry variation, parameters for material specification and for boundary conditions were varied in addition. The surrogate model was trained by the workflow generated DoE-data and could be used for different kinds of optimization. As a conclusion, it has been demonstrated that the methodology can be used for the engineering design process of turbine blades, while delivering physically correct results. The different techniques for surrogate modelling were examined and compared. With the help of these surrogate models, an optimization of life, mass and efficiency with 22.5 million evaluations was possible. Finally, an overview of the methodology for the case of a real world turbine blade could be given, and an improved blade in the sense of multi-objective robust design was found.