Turbomachinery can be the most rewarding of CFD simulations. At the same time, it can be the most challenging.
Turbomachinery covers a broad range of products including compressors, turbines (gas, hydraulic, steam, wind), turbochargers, pumps, fans and more. And turbomachinery users demand ongoing improvements, such as increased efficiency, reliability and durability while reducing emissions (for those involving combustion) and noise.
Let’s consider jet engines. Aircraft and engine manufacturers spend billions of dollars annually to improve the fuel economy of their newest products, with amazing results. Between 1960 and 2014, the fuel efficiency of a commercial aircraft improved by 55 percent. Design engineers are challenged to meet ever escalating targets in a competitive, time-critical environment. While experience and testing are essential to the process, advanced CFD simulation tools are key enablers. No amount of R&D could fund the multitude of physical prototypes, test stands and technicians needed to replace the insight gathered from simulation.
And here’s the difficult part: The easy gains have already been taken. To get to the next level, simulation has to move from single physics to multiphysics, from modeling one component at a time to subsystems to (ultimately) the full gas turbine. Simulations must include not just CFD and structures, but also systems and electrical considerations.
The Power of Ten
This is why ANSYS takes a broad-based approach to improving turbomachinery simulation. We apply resources to innovate and deliver improvements at every stage of the simulation process, from modeling to meshing, from solving to post-processing. Whether you are simulating a jet engine or some other piece of turbomachinery, ANSYS helps you to extend the limits of what is possible so you can maximize your product’s performance and efficiency. In ANSYS 17.0, we are releasing 10 more critical advances to computational fluid dynamics (CFD), mechanical and systems simulation software that accelerate, enrich and extend turbomachinery capabilities.
Take transient blade row simulation, for example. Every turbomachine contains one or more rows of blades, with at least one rotating row. Optimization of the blade design is essential to achieve superior performance, and transient analysis reveals phenomena obscured by steady-state simulations.
IN ANSYS 17.0, new transient blade row capability dramatically increases simulation speed by over 10x while actually reducing the hardware requirements (CPU time, RAM and disk storage). Previously, the flow for every blade in every row had to be painstakingly calculated — a prohibitively expensive undertaking. ANSYS 17.0 obtains the full wheel solution by calculating as few as one blade per row.
ANSYS 17.0 includes nine more advances that greatly expand turbomachinery simulation capabilities across a broad spectrum so that you can solve even more problems, improve results and enhance your ability to innovate. Ten advances that deliver more reward with less effort!
Check out all 10 advancements at the ANSYS 17.0 Turbomachinery page. Then do a deeper dive into three of the most important improvements in the webinar Three Advanced Simulation Technologies for Faster, More Accurate Turbomachinery Simulation.
You will learn how you can obtain a full wheel solution by calculating as few as one blade per row; how advances in scale-resolving turbulence methods provide higher fidelity results for combustion physics simulations; and how a breakthrough, one-equation intermittency-based turbulence transition model substantially decreases the complexity and solution time of boundary layer simulations.
The post 10 Simulation Advancements for Turbomachinery in ANSYS 17.0 appeared first on ANSYS Blog.