Front-Loading in the Simulation-Driven Design Process of Steam Turbine Blades Using Hybrid Computational Method of Quasi and Fully 3D Fluid Simulation

Abstract

We developed a hybrid computational method for the design of steam turbine blades. It is composed of three main blocks: the meridian simulation, 3D simulation, and mixing plane blocks. This method was applied to a one-stage medium-pressure turbine and a four-stage low-pressure steam turbine. The results showed that the computation time was approximately half or even less than that of a fully 3D simulation. There was good agreement of the main design parameters, which suggests that our method is useful for the design of turbine blades. By use of this hybrid simulation method, front-loading of the blade design can be achieved and the number of feedbacks in the design process can be reduced. We believe that the proposed method is potentially useful for the simulation-driven design of various industrial products.