Software increases blade design productivity

An AEA Technology, CFX Division product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 10, 2002

The latest release of CFX-BladeGen delivers new capabilities that further improve its ease-of-use and utility in the rotating machinery blade design process.

The latest release of CFX-BladeGen delivers new capabilities that further improve its ease-of-use and utility in the rotating machinery blade design process, providing significant productivity gains to both axial and radial blade designers.

The new version greatly simplifies the process of creating and exporting trimmed meridional profiles.

It also offers a wide range of other features including a new meridional control curve feature that broadens the range of blade geometries that the software can handle and a parametric study tool that automates the process of evaluating a range of operating conditions in CFX-BladeGenPlus.

"CFX-BladeGen version 4.1 is another release in a series of major software releases from CFX, developed as a specialised component of the powerful CFX software system for our customers doing turbomachinery design and analysis", said Michael Raw, Vice President CFX Product Development.

"The new features and user interface enhancements in the new release will further strengthen CFX-BladeGen's position as the premier blade design tool and help us expand CFX's world-leading position in turbomachinery design software".

CFX-BladeGen version 4.1 is available now.

CFX-BladeGen is tailored to the needs of designers of turbine, pump and compressor blades.

A unique advantage of CFX-BladeGen is that it can address a wide variety of rotating and stationary bladed components, including axial and radial blades, for applications such as inducers, pumps, compressors, turbines, expanders, turbochargers, fans, blowers, etc.

The program offers a wide range of data import and export options, including DXF, IGES, Pro/Engineer, ICEM HEXA and CFX-TurboGrid.

CFX-BladeGenPlus adds the ability to perform full 3D flow simulations so users can rapidly evaluate the performance of a blade as part of the design process.

In as little as 5 minutes, the software generates complete performance reports including overall performance, mass-averaged turbomachinery qualities and approximately 50 graphical images.

The new trimmed meridional profile capability in CFX-BladeGen v4.1 provides greater flexibility and integration into design practices by making it easy to design under one set of assumptions and analyse and export geometry under another.

Axial designers often specify the design in terms of constant radius layers while radial designs often have a master "as cast" geometry.

Both radial and axial designers usually need to analyse and export trimmed meridional profiles that include the actual hub and shroud with spanwise layers.

The new version of the software accommodates these needs by allowing designers to design and store the blade geometry as they are accustomed to doing while automatically exporting the trimmed version whenever it is needed.

Another important new feature in CFX-BladeGen v4.1 is the capability to use user-defined meridional control curves that further broaden the range of geometries that can be addressed by enabling user control of the meridional interpolation grid.

User-controlled meridional control curves provide users with greater flexibility in designing difficult geometries, such as those with irregular shapes and long flow paths.

Users can insert or drag control curves with the mouse when this feature is enabled.

The new parametric study tool greatly reduces the amount of time needed to evaluate a design in CFX-BladeGenPlus.

It uses a wizard interface that automates the process of obtaining information on the performance of a design under a range of operating conditions, fluid properties, or grid configurations.

When the analysis is complete, the software generates a formatted report with all machine dependent calculated values such as efficiency and head rise, as well as graphical output that can include line graphs and contour plots.

(This was Engineeringtalk's Top Story on 7 September 2002).