Design optimization of customizable centrifugal industrial blowers for gas turbine power plants

Nowadays, design processes demand agile and flexible tools and methods to meet market needs. Virtual prototyping techniques are widespread in design strategies and practices, because these technologies reduce the project development lead-time and cost related to physical prototyping. The aim of this paper is the study and application of an approach for the modeling, simulation and geometrical optimization of fans for gas turbine air supply. Fan is a type of machine used to move a fluid, typically a gas such as air, exploiting the kinetic energy of a rotating impeller. It consists mainly of two components: housing and rotor. There is extensive literature on the design and optimization of industrial fan, but main works refer to a small or medium standardized fan, where it is possible to study many parameters and perform many experimental tests. The paper presents an approach for the efficiency optimization of large and customizable centrifugal industrial blowers for gas turbine air supply. The design variables investigated in this study were the blades quantity, orientation and shape. The proposed optimization method has been used for the design optimization of a blower for gas turbine power plant. The response surfaces allowed defining correlation between design variables and efficiency. The optimized design was 18 % more efficient than the original one.