SpinOffs

The turbine of an automotive turbocharger is subject to a wide and demanding range of requirements and constraints. High efficiency is required to reduce the pumping work of the engine that can make a small but desirable improvement in fuel economy. The automotive application also requires a good transient response, and a low rotating inertia of the turbine is necessary for this. Durability and the ability to operate for a guaranteed lifetime are required – but such performance is not easy to achieve, given the hot gas environment and the way the turbine is subject to frequent changes in condition. The market is very competitive, and so manufacturing cost is very important. These various factors are in competition with each other, and a successful turbine is one that achieves the right balance between them, rather than one that excels in one particular area.

The 2015 Paris Climate Talks (COP21) were successful in achieving consensus from 196 countries that climate change must be given significant attention. There was a particular focus on the release of carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as something that must be curtailed.

In May of 2016, Concepts NREC and NUMECA International announced a strategic partnership to combine their products to provide a comprehensive turbomachinery design and analysis system. In November of 2016, Concepts NREC released version 8.5 of its Agile Engineering Design System, the first version to integrate NUMECA's FINE/Turbo product for CFD analysis. Geometry and boundary-condition data specified in AxCent are automatically passed to FINE/Turbo to set up the CFD calculation. Many of the FINE/Turbo grid generation parameters and solver settings are provided in the AxCent interface to allow a CFD calculation to be set up and run without leaving the AxCent application.

The biggest reason to use an integrated turbomachinery design and analysis environment is speed. Basically, having everything you need in one place makes a big difference!