Prof. Mehdi Vahdati
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Imperial College London

Title: A Review of Computational Aeroelasticity of Turbomachines

There is fierce competition amongst aero-engine manufacturers to supply tomorrow’s aircraft with engines that are lighter, quieter and more efficient than the ones used today. Current designs are approaching their limit in efficiency and noise, and to achieve significant improvements, new design concepts are required. To reduce weight, the new blades will be made of composite materials. The light, flexible fan blades are highly loaded and will be prone to aeroelastic instabilities.

Aeroelastic engine/rig tests are costly (especially in case of blade failure) and time-consuming, computational simulations are increasingly used during engine development. Computational modelling also offers advantages for studying the causes and mechanisms of aeroelastic instabilities because they allow independent variation of several parameters, which would often have to be fixed in an experimental investigation. In this tutorial numerical models which can be used for aeroelasticity of turbomachine will be presented.

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Dr. John P. Longley
Whittle Laboratory
University of Cambridge

Title: An Introduction to Three-Dimensional Flows in Turbomachinery

Turbomachines are required to be efficient, have appropriate life expectancy and high power output. In addition, the necessary aerodynamic design processes are costly, time consuming and often involve three-dimensional flows. An understanding of the physical principles that govern the behaviour of three-dimensional flows is essential in turbomachinery design.

This tutorial presents an introduction to the types of three-dimensional flow that occur in turbomachinery. Typically, these flows have strong pressure fields associated with the blade loading and with the swirling of the flow in the turbomachine annulus.  Accurate prediction of many of these highly complex flows is possible using computational techniques. However, simple fluid-dynamic principles explain their qualitative behaviour. The emphasis in this tutorial is on the physical phenomena, with simple theoretical approaches outlined where appropriate.

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