The swept and leaned blade influence on the aerodynamic performance of a transonic axial compressor rotor

In order to understand the effects of axial sweep and tangential lean of blades on aerodynamic performance of transonic axial compressor NASA ROTOR 37, a systematic study was carried out. The optimal design method was developed and applied. The blade stacking line was described by Bezier polynomials. The optimization problem was to achieve the maximum rotor isentropic efficiency and pressure ratio at the design point, with a constraint on the mass flow rate. Commercial software Design 3D was employed for aerodynamic evaluation based on Navier–Stokes code. Simulation results were validated with experimental data in the literature. The optimization technique used in this paper is based on the concept of function approximation. This approximation helps to realize a rapid method available to evaluate rotor aerodynamic performance. The method requires the existence of a database containing several blade geometries and their associated aerodynamic performances. These database samples are used to construct the Artificial Neural Network. Finally, the optimal rotor configurations were obtained and compared to the original design. The effect of swept and leaned blade on the rotor performance was analyzed.