Development of an Unstructured Multi-Stage Turbomachinery CFD Solver for Aerodynamic Investigations on Detailed Geometry

Abstract During aerodynamic design in turbomachinery, detailed geometries in real machines are often neglected because of the restrictions in both CFD solvers and geometrical data handled in the workflow. The templated workflows are efficient but difficult to deal with irregular configurations. To gain capabilities in aerodynamic evaluations for irregular configurations like novel airframe-propulsion integrated systems or complex geometries of air-cooled turbines, we have developed a new unstructured CFD solver. The paper presents the design philosophy of the solver focusing on two key functions for industrial use: the multigrid acceleration and blade-row interfaces. The agglomeration multigrid accelerates steady simulations by a factor of 5 without affecting converged solutions. The blade row interfaces are formulated to conserve mass flow rate, which can be applied regardless of the domain decomposition for parallelization. Through comparisons on a high-pressure compressor test case, the new solver is shown to have similar characteristics with two existing independently developed solvers. With more validation cases, the solver will be ready for various practical turbomachinery simulations.