Robust Design Strategies for Heavy Duty Axial Compressor Inlet Strut

Novel procedures for the robust optimization of compressor blades are here presented and applied to the optimal design of the inlet duct struts of an heavy duty, multistage axial compressor. Different approaches can be adopted to properly define the struts actual inlet flow boundary conditions, which can be affected by spatial non-uniformity or uncertainness: suitable deterministic and stochastic approaches are therefore introduced. A number of blade solutions are computed and discussed. The presented procedures are able to find new struts geometries giving improved performances with respect to a reference strut, mainly with an air mass flow increase. In particular the proposed stochastic procedure seems to be quite appropriate for a large class of design problems with parameters fluctuation or to properly analyze the statistical effect of changing operative conditions occurrence in power plants.