The Design and Optimization of Additively Manufactured Radial Compressor of a Miniature Gas Turbine Engine

Abstract

This paper presents a multidisciplinary design methodology for a single-stage radial compressor of a small-scale gas turbine jet engine. The entire engine, producing more than 600N thrust with an engine diameter of less than 30 cm will be manufactured by the AM in a single piece. Therefore, it is crucial to pinpoint the design limitations that may arise due to the AM methods. The preliminary design calculations are carried out in the VKI's in-house Centrifugal Compressor Off-Design (CCOD) code. The detailed design and optimization studies coupled with CFD simulations are performed to improve the aerodynamic performance of the radial compressor by using the Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method with an Adjoint solver in the VKI's in-house Computer Aided Design and Optimization (CADO) tool. In the final design, a large increase in thrust is obtained and the manufacturing constraints are satisfied.