Daikin Applied of Minneapolis, Minn, a fortune 1000 company and the largest heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and refrigeration company in the world developed a new, ultra-efficient compressor design potentially capable of achieving multimillion dollar performance gains by using TURBOdesign Suite. Turbomachinery design engineers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) worked to achieve higher performance levels to meet U.S. and international efficiency standards can take advantage of the 3D inverse design software system, TURBOdesign Suite.

In general, one point of efficiency gain equates to about $1 million (U.S.) of profit," says Guy Phuong, Development Engineer at Daikin Applied. "Daikin Applied’s target performance gain for this project using the TURBOdesign Suite software is 2.5 points of efficiency gain. We already have achieved more than a two-point compressor efficiency improvement."

The HVAC system represents a large percentage of a building’s energy use. Since the 1980s, manufacturers of HVAC equipment like Daikin Applied have worked to make their systems more efficient. This was originally driven by rising energy costs and therefore customer demand. It was mandated by governmental standards like those set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Engine Testing Regulations and Europe’s Ecodesign Directive. There are several methods for making HVAC systems that meet or exceed new standards, including making individual components such as air conditioning system compressors more efficient.

"Our 3D inverse design optimization technology provides innovative solutions while reducing development time and costs," said Professor Mehrdad Zangeneh, founder and managing director of ADT. "By using the TURBOdesign Suite, Daikin Applied engineers were able to apply the 3D inverse design approach to directly use knowledge of detailed fluid dynamics, as provided by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and detailed measurements, to arrive at a breakthrough solution that met efficiency goals."

In the 3D inverse design approach enabled by the TURBOdesign Suite, the blade geometry is computed for a given pressure or loading distribution. Since 3D pressure distribution controls the viscous behaviour of the flow, by controlling the 3D pressure field, it is possible to directly use the detailed information provided by CFD solutions to arrive at a choice of optimum loading and control particular sources of performance loss in turbomachines. Read the case study in full.

Inverse Design offers a means by which turbomachinery designers can produce breakthrough designs in short order with lower costs. Our joint webinar with ASME: Maximizing Turbomachinery Performance with Inverse Design led by industry experts on the 24th of April will enable viewers to understand:

How TURBOdesign's Inverse Method is applied to modern turbomachinery design How Inverse Design addresses some of the key challenges facing turbomachinery manufacturers today The key steps needed to maximize the performance and efficiency of a design How to optimize designs using TURBOdesign Suite and how TURBOdesign links with analytical tools such as ANSYS and Star-CCM+ How Daikin Applied has used TURBOdesign Suite to optimize their chiller compressor designs for dramatically higher efficiencies and breakthrough performance