Updating Turbomachinery Aerodynamics Teaching on an Undergraduate Course Using Three-Dimensional Design Tools

Abstract This paper outlines the update of a turbomachinery course to cover three-dimensional (3D) aerodynamics using a Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes solver. Prior to the activities outlined in this paper, the course was taught in a conventional way with a series of lectures and a timed, written, open book examination in a formal exam setting. Students were equipped with a calculator and set of notes including correlations from Howell and Soderberg. The students had around 1 h to answer the turbomachinery question, which was revealed to them only when they opened the paper at the start of the exam. This limited the depth of any aerodynamic problem they could get through and so they were restricted to simple design or analysis exercises. The genesis of the course update was the release in 2017 of “MULTALL OPEN” (Denton, J. D., 2017, “Multall: An Open Source, Computational Fluid Dynamics Based, Turbomachinery Design System,” ASME J. Turbomach., 139(12), p. 121001), a freely available turbomachinery design system, and this was adopted as the course software—although other software choices were considered. Students now produce two turbomachinery designs during the course. These are both based on the J85 turbojet—largely to keep cycle calculations to a minimum but it was also important to ensure that students recognize that they were completing a real engineering task. The first task was a 3D aerodynamic design of multistage turbine, which includes compressible flow, tip clearance, and stacking techniques such as lean or sweep. The second task was a midspan (two-dimensional) compressor design. The exact cycle conditions were varied each year to explore design scenarios such as an increase in firing temperature. Assessment was by means of a short report where the best students report on their design choices, provide critical analysis of the design using appropriate postprocessing techniques, and compare their designs to the state of the art in the wider literature. As well as describing the successes and challenges of the update to 3D design methods the paper provides some guidance for educators thinking about adopting a similar approach.