Research and Development in Turbomachinery

 

Advanced Design Technology is actively pursuing joint R&D projects with major turbomachinery industries and research centres by forming consortium projects to solve some of the important generic problems in turbomachinery aerodynamics.

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The ALPHEUS Project

With a growing share of intermittent renewable energy sources grid stability can be maintained, and flexibility enhanced, by applying pumped hydropower energy storage. ALPHEUS will improve reversible pump/turbine (RPT) technology and adjacent civil structures needed to make pumped hydro storage economically viable in shallow seas and coastal environments with flat topography.
 
For our part of the ALPHEUS Project, ADT is responsible for the blade design and optimization of two low-head axial contra-rotating reversible pump-turbines.
 
ALPHEUS is due to start in April 2020, and we're going to be posting regular updates throughout the process. You can always check back here and see the latest news below, or fill out the form on this page and we'll drop the updates straight into your inbox.

 

Industrial Consortia

Industrial Consortium on Development of TURBOdesign2

 

This consortium was established in April 2001 to develop TURBOdesign2, which is a 3D transonic viscous inverse design method mainly developed for high speed applications such as transonic fans.

The companies sponsoring this project were Avio Group of Italy, Ebara Corporation of Japan, Kawasaki Heavy Industry, Rolls-Royce Aeroengines, Toshiba and Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan.

The sponsors actively encourage to provide input into the design of the graphical user interface for the code and also supplied test cases for the testing and development of the code. The Beta version of the code was released in March 2003.

 

Industrial Consortium on Propeller Fan Noise Reduction

 

Propeller fans are widely used in many applications from automotive to air-conditioning and computer CPU and other consumer electronics applications. One of the major issues facing the designers of propeller fans is the control of the fan noise without major deterioration of efficiency, performance and compactness of the fan.
 
In Japan, a noise reduction technology development project for propeller fans has been successfully completed on 31st March 2004 after more than two-year research activities. TURBOdesign1 of Advanced Design Technology Ltd played the major role for redesigning an existing propeller fan for electric appliances. Fifteen Japanese companies, including electric appliance companies, automotive companies, air-conditioning apparatus companies, industrial equipment companies, and a CFD code vendor, supported the project.
 
The project focused on the broadband noise in a propeller fan, where complex 3D flow structures including tip leakage vortex and its interaction with adjacent blade has important effects in noise generation. Fourteen fan rotors were designed using TURBOdesign1 by Ebara Research Co., Ltd. to investigate the effects of blade loading distribution in the streamwise as well as spanwise directions on fan noise and efficiency.
 
The project clarified important feature of flow physics related to the fan noise generation and efficiency reduction. Significant improvements have been achieved both for noise level and the efficiency, and the impact of optimizing the blade loading distribution by TURBOdesign1 has been demonstrated.
 

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