Redesign of a Highly Loaded Transonic Turbine Nozzle Blade Using a New Viscous Inverse Design Method

The redesign of VKI-LS89 turbine vane, which is typical of a highly loaded transonic turbine guide vane is presented. The redesign is accomplished using a new inverse design method where the blade walls move with a virtual velocity distribution derived from the difference between the current and the target pressure distributions on the blade surfaces. This new inverse method is fully consistent with the viscous flow assumption and is implemented into the time accurate solution of the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations that are expressed in an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) form to account for mesh movement. A cell-vertex finite volume method is used to discretize the equations in space; time accurate integration is obtained using dual time stepping. An algebraic Baldwin-Lomax model is used for turbulence closure. The flow analysis formulation is first assessed against the LS89 experimental data. The inverse formulation that is implemented in the same code, is also assessed for its robustness and accuracy, by inverse designing the LS89 original geometry through running the inverse method with the original LS89 pressure distributions as target distributions but starting from an arbitrary geometry. The inverse design method is then used to redesign the LS89 using an arbitrary pressure distributions at a subsonic and a transonic outflow condition and the results are interpreted in terms of the blade overall aerodynamic performance.