A design for fouling oriented optimization of an HPT nozzle

Fouling and erosion are two problems that severely affect gas turbines. The shape of the blade, its roughness, and its structural stability can vary as a consequence of these phenomena. The outcomes of this occurrence can span from the efficiency reduction to the engine shut down according to the nature of the material ingested, to the concentration of contaminants in the air, the cleanliness of fuel and to the particular design of the machine. In this work, an axial turbine airfoil is modified according to the requirement of less sensibility to the phenomena above mentioned, utilizing an automatic optimization algorithm. An artificial neural network surrogate approach is used for searching the optimal shape, minimizing the computational cost of the entire process. The optimum design of the blade is therefore achieved, in order to reduce the effects of deposition on the performance. The methodology here proposed is fully general and it is applied to an HPT nozzle in the present analysis.