Using adjoint CFD to quantify the impact of manufacturing variations on a heavy duty turbine vane

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how adjoint CFD methods can efficiently quantify the impact of manufacturing variations on turbine vane performance, validated against empirical data from 102 casted parts.

Contribution

It introduces the application of adjoint CFD to assess manufacturing variations in turbine vanes, offering a computationally efficient alternative to finite difference methods.

Findings

High correlation between adjoint and finite difference calculations

Adjoint method reduces computational cost significantly

Empirical validation with 102 casted parts

Abstract

We consider the evaluation of manufacturing variations to the aerodynamic performace of turbine vanes using the adjoint method. The empirical data is based on 102 white light scans from casted parts. We compare expensive calculations by the finite disfference method with cheap adjoint calculations and we find high correlations.