CFD analysis of turbomachinery

PCA's engineering staff have been developers and users of CFD during the time that these tools have evolved to become routinely applicable to turbomachinery analysis. The emphasis at PCA has always been to use CFD to gain insight into the internal flow phenomena and to use that knowledge to improve designs to maximise performance, reducing the need for development testing of new machines.

Application of CFD is relatively straightforward with todays user-friendly interfaces and powerful, low-cost computing platforms. However, to interpret the results and to translate that knowledge into design improvements requires experience and judgement and it is in this that PCA is able to excel.

The modelling capability moves forward with each new release of ANSYS CFX and its supporting tools, enabling users to conduct pre and post-processing with an increasingly accurate representation of real geometry. The more representative the model, the more accurate are the results.

CFD analysis capability has moved on such that transient calculations are more affordable and these have become routine for compressor and turbine stages. In terms of analysis, interaction with structural and thermal calculations are now feasible so prediction of forced response, flutter and conjugate heat transfer are becoming more regular features of PCA's consulting projects.