An Approach to automatically optimize the Hydraulic performance of Blade System for Hydraulic Machines using Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to automatic hydraulic optimization of hydraulic machine's blade system combining a blade geometric modeller and parametric generator with automatic CFD solution procedure and multi-objective genetic algorithm. In order to evaluate a plurality of design options and quickly estimate the blade system's hydraulic performance, the approximate model which is able to substitute for the original inside optimization loop has been employed in the hydraulic optimization of blade by using function approximation. As the approximate model is constructed through the database samples containing a set of blade geometries and their resulted hydraulic performances, it can ensure to correctly imitate the real blade's performances predicted by the original model. As hydraulic machine designers are accustomed to do design with 2D blade profiles on stream surface that are then stacked to 3D blade geometric model in the form of NURBS surfaces, geometric variables to be optimized were defined by a series profiles on stream surfaces. The approach depends on the cooperation between a genetic algorithm, a database and user defined objective functions and constraints which comprises hydraulic performances, structural and geometric constraint functions. Example covering optimization design of a mixed-flow pump impeller is presented.