FISCHER Fuel Cell Compressor AG (FFCC), headquartered in Herzogenbuchsee, Switzerland are the technology leader in the field of air compressors for fuel cell technology and are part of the FISCHER Spindle Group AG.
Based on the patented spiral groove bearing technology, the company has a high-tech product portfolio and plays a central role as a partner to the world’s leading companies. In a joint venture with WEICHAI Power, FISCHER WEICHAI (Weifang) Fuel Cell Compressor are investing in setting up global series production.
EMTCT-120K Air GEN4
FFCC needed to accelerate development timelines for their high speed compressor applications. After a thorough evaluation of TURBOdesign Suite, embedded within their own design platform, the advantages of 3D Inverse Design, and its ability to significantly reduce time spent in the design phase, became clear.
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Velocity Streamlines (Blade to Blade View)
Uniquely, in the discipline of turbomachinery design, TURBOdesign1 allows engineers to specify both the spanwise work distribution and the blade loading distribution within a turbomachine. This gives direct control of the blade surface pressure distributions whilst at the same time allowing designers to control or suppress secondary flows and regions of high acceleration or over-diffusion.
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Pressure Distribution (Meridional View)
This means that the all important performance parameters and flow features are the input to the design process, and the 3D blades shapes that meet those requirements are the output.
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Velocity Streamlines (3D Cyclic Section)
FFCC’s customer requirements for high-speed compressor performance necessitated a new rotor geometry. Using TURBOdesign Suite and the 3D Inverse Design method, the development time to produce a design that met these exacting specifications was cut from around a month, to just one week.
Volute - CAD Model
With ADT providing comprehensive support and assistance at every stage, FFCC engineers were able to quickly train up and apply TURBOdesign Suite to their design challenges. From creating preliminary designs to performing pre-optimization studies and generating sophisticated design and analysis workflows. Fine-tuning was streamlined thanks to interfaces with FFCC’s existing CFD and FEM tools. The traditional approach to design optimization, that could span several weeks or months, was obsoleted.
Impeller - CAD Model
FFCC were able to exploit the key technologies embedded within TURBOdesign Suite to undertake:
• Preliminary design assessments for compressor and turbine wheels.
• Blade geometry creation based on the 3D Inverse Design method.
• Reverse engineering of existing blade designs.
• Optimization of designs for multiple objectives.
• Generation of fully matched volute geometries.
• Seamless workflows that interfaced with FFCC’s existing analysis ecosystem.
Impeller - Manufactured
