Rapid low fidelity turbomachinery disk optimization

Turbomachinery disks are heavy, highly stressed components used in gas turbines. Improved design of turbomachinery disks could yield a significant reduction in engine weight. This paper focuses on rapid low fidelity design and optimization of isotropic and transversely isotropic disks. Discussion includes the development of a one dimensional plane stress model, disk parameterization methods, and the implementation of a genetic algorithm for shape optimization. Three traditional geometry definition methods are compared to two new methods that are described and produce more optimum designs. Hardware from the GE E3 is used as an example. The analysis code is open-source, graphical, interactive, and portable on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.