A Robust Mixing Plane and Its Application in Three-Dimensional Inverse Design of Transonic Turbine Stages

A robust mixing plane method satisfying interface flux conservation, nonreflectivity and retaining interface flow variation; valid at all Mach numbers and applicable for any machine configuration is formulated and implemented in a vertex based finite volume solver for flow analysis and inverse design. The formulation is based on superposing perturbed flow variables derived from the three-dimensional (3D) characteristics obtained along the flow direction on the exchanged mixed out averaged quantities. The method is extended for low speed applications using low Mach number preconditioning. Subsequently, inverse design runs over a single stage transonic low pressure (LP) turbine configuration conducted at a fixed mass flow boundary condition and spanwise loading condition similar to the baseline generates optimized configurations providing performance improvement while achieving prespecified target meridional load distribution.