FISCHER Fuel Cell Compressor Cuts Design Time by 75% Using 3D Inverse Design

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.

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.

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