Introduction to TURBOcfd

The application of CFD codes in the turbomachinery blade design process, even if inverse design methods such as TURBOdesign-1 are employed, play an important role in highlighting loss mechanisms in presence of viscous effects. In addition they can be used to provide estimates of the overall design characteristic including efficiency and head variation with flow rates. Increasingly CFD codes are relied for qualitative assessment of noise in fans and cavitation in pumps.

Many Turbomachinery companies employ general purpose CFD codes as part of the design process for this purpose. However, in many general purpose CFD codes the mesh generation and problem set up can be quite time consuming which can affect the productivity of designers and increase the design and development time. In order to overcome some of the problems involved in employing general purpose codes in the blade design process, ADT has developed a new product called TURBOcfd, which is specifically designed in order to streamline the application of CFD in the turbomachinery blade design process.

Unique Features

The code, which will be made available as a package together with TURBOdesign-1 inverse design method, has a number of important unique features such as easy import of geometry from TURBOdesign-1, automatic mesh generation and a turbomachinery specific post processor.

The pre-processor has been designed in such a way as to ensure that within a matter of 5 minutes the mesh is generated and all boundary conditions are specified and the CFD computation is ready to run.

The post-processor output includes information on NPSH for pump applications and broadband noise for fan applications (to be made available from April 2006). Experimental validation of these models has shown that they provide a good qualitative measure of these quantities. Furthermore, the code allows for automatic characteristics computations (i.e. multi-point analysis) based on a user defined set of exit static pressures.

Another important feature of TURBOcfd is the solver, which is robust, accurate and computationally efficient. The solver has been developed at the University of Florence and the code has been extensively validated both at the university and in industry over a 15 year period. The computational efficiency of the code enables typical computations with fine meshes of the order of 350,000 nodes to be completed on a P4 3.0 GHz PC in a matter of 30 minutes.

The combination of fast problem definition in the pre-processor, fast and accurate CFD solver and turbomachinery specific postprocessor makes TURBOcfd a unique code for improving the productivity of designers involved in the design of pump and fan applications.

Benefits and Advantages of TURBOcfd?

• A CFD code specifically developed for turbomachinery applications and well integrated with the TURBOdesign-1 design environment.

• Pre-Processor allows for very rapid mesh generation and boundary condition definition. Problem can be set up and ready to run within 5 minutes.

• Specific turbomachinery post processor allows for rapid visualisation as well as summary information on efficiency, head, flow rate and cavitation performance in pumps and broadband noise in Fans (available in April 2006).

• Fast and accurate solver allowing accurate solutions to be obtained in about 30 min on P4 PC for 350,000 nodes mesh.

• Well validated CFD solver originally developed at Florence University with more than 70 peer-reviewed papers.

Online Presentations

Benefit from ADT's web meetings, we can offer full presentations and live demos via the internet on TURBOdesign-1, TURBOdesign-2 and TURBOcfd with no significant up-front costs, no software to install and with no obligation.

For arranging demonstrations of these unique turbomachinery design and analysis tools or for information on a trial license for evaluation please contact us at sales@adtechnology.co.uk