Inverse Design of 3D Compressor Blades With Adjoint Method

A three-dimensional (3D) CFD-based design method for high-speed axial compressor blades is being developed based on the discrete adjoint method. An adjoint code is built corresponding to RVC3D, a 3D turbomachinery Navier-Stokes analysis code developed at NASA Glenn. A validation study with the Euler equations indicates that the adjoint sensitivities are sensitive to the choice of boundary conditions for the adjoint variables in internal flow problems and constraints may be needed on internal boundaries to capture proper physics of the adjoint system. The design method is demonstrated with inverse design based on Euler physics, and the results indicate that the adjoint design method produces efficient 3D designs by drastically reducing the computational cost.