Application of the ball-spine algorithm to design an axial-flow comprssor blade

In this paper, a novel inverse design algorithm, called a ball spine algorithm,is developed to design the blade to blade ow passage of axial-ow compressors. thealgorithm considers the blade surfaces as a set of virtual balls that move freely alongthe specied directions, called 'spines'. to start the solution, an initial guess for theblade geometry is required. then, the blade-to-blade ow eld is solved using an inhouseinviscid solver. comparing the computed pressure distribution (cpd) with thetarget pressure distribution (tpd) over the blade surfaces gives guidelines in dierentialmovements for the balls to obtain a modied geometry. for the modied geometry, newgrids are automatically generated by an algebraic-elliptic grid-generator. the sequenceis repeated until the target pressure is met. an error parameter,
pd, indicating thedierence between cpd and tpd along the suction and pressure surfaces, is computed,while the blade geometry evolves toward the target geometry. for the initial guess,
pdis obtained as 13700 pa, while, after 100 generations,
pd is reduced to 222 pa.