Tool development for preliminary design of next generation low pressure turbines

The purpose of this thesis work concerns the development of a tool named PRIME, able to provide quick and easy aeromechanical feedback in the preliminary design of a low pressure turbine of aeronautical engines. This tool presents a considerable improvement in the preliminary design loops, thereby making the project process more robust and smart both on aerodynamic and aeromechanical side. The benefits are related to a reduction of misunderstanding and data exchange error beyond time and resources savings. The tool workflow begins with the 3D CAD airfoil creation, starting from geometry finalization handles in the Unigraphics NX environment, and considering parametric templates which represent mechanical arrangements on low pressure turbine stage outside the main flow paths. The second step of automatic design system is to generate the FEM model (developed in ANSYS Workbench environment) of above mentioned the turbine stages with customizable boundary conditions to run static and modal analysis according to internal design practice. The contribution to this work, focuses on CAD part to extend the capabilities of the exiting, in house developed tool (named DynBooster), for the cad generation. The whole code has been modified substantially so as to make it more lightweight and flexible. Furthermore, several parametric templates were generated, starting from creation of the cross-section sketch with a simple and robust logic in order to achieve more realistic results. On completion of this part, a new GUI allows the user to choose any template and modify all the parameters that define its geometry. In this way the user can create about 96 configurations so as to test new innovative LPT geometry. In addition, for the transition between imperial and metric units, a converter tool has been inserted. Eventually, the tool has been integrated with wizard (the current process FEM generation build in ANSYS Workbench) and tested, launching static analysis with subsequent generation of campbell diagrams. In the future development of this tool it is foreseen to add a producibility package. This plug-in would introduce the possibility to realize a CAD model which takes into account the manufacturing process capability and thus makes synergy between component design and production.