Axial Blade Design with CAESES 4.0

With CAESES® 4.0, we have further fine-tuned our axial blade design capa­bil­i­ties accord­ing to the requests and wishes of our cus­tomers. We are also con­stantly receiv­ing great feedback through our com­mu­nity forum. Thanks to everyone for con­tribut­ing! We hope you will enjoy our latest blade design efforts — there you go: 

Ded­i­cated Blade View

We are trying to keep the number of buttons as low as possible. However, with version 4.0, we decided to insert this impor­tant blade design view (ZX). So far, this has been possible only by using stored camera posi­tions (which you still can do for custom views). 

New 2D-3D Transformation

The ​“stream section” curve type of CAESES® maps the 2D profile into the 3D space, where hub and shroud infor­ma­tion as well as a stacking axis are taken into account. For this trans­for­ma­tion, you can choose between dif­fer­ent design modes, where we’ve added the (Z,R*theta) mode for custom profiles. The ​“default” option is now pri­mar­ily used in the context of cen­trifu­gal impeller design. 

Custom Profiles

CAESES® is a powerful blade software that lets you design your own para­met­ric 2D profiles, not matter how complex or special they are. Simply wrap such a profile in a feature def­i­n­i­tion, and then use it as input for the stream section, which maps it into the 3D space for you. Store 2D profiles on your hard disk to import and re-use it for new projects. Every­thing is now easier with CAESES® 4.0! 

Solid From Intersections

We want you to focus on ideas for a great blade model first, this is the most exciting part! However, as soon as your para­met­ric 3D shape is ready, you can simply apply the new brep oper­a­tion ​“solid from inter­sec­tions”. It creates a solid model by using the para­met­ric blade as well as the hub and shroud surfaces. There is also a new mech­a­nism to extrap­o­late your blade surface into the hub and shroud geometry before inter­sect­ing it. 

Write Your Own Exports

This has been part of CAESES® for a long time already, but let’s mention it again: We’ve noticed repeat­edly that standard export formats for discrete 3D sections (point data) slightly differ from company to company. CFD engi­neers need this point data to continue with meshing and aero­dy­namic sim­u­la­tion. For this purpose, you can simply write your own export routine! Examples of custom exports are Tur­bo­Grid (*.curve) files or AutoGrid (*.geom­turbo) files, e.g. to include endwall con­tour­ing information.

See also this post for more information. 

Version 4.0 — What a Huge Task

It took us months to add a new geometry kernel, and to make it robust and smooth with version 4.0. Don’t ask the devel­op­ers about it ;-) With all the new pos­si­bil­i­ties (fillets, Boolean oper­a­tions, solid inter­sec­tions etc.) you are per­fectly equipped with every­thing you need to run design studies with any sophis­ti­cated CAD geometry. Version 4.0 is really a big step forward!