PROCESS FOR THE DESIGN OF AN AIRFOIL

A process for designing an airfoil, such as a compressor blade or vane of a turbomachine, using a CFD or computational flow dynamics analysis. The process includes creating a solid model for use in the analysis, inputting the fluid inlet temperature, the momentum and the pressure to the airfoil, inputting the momentum of the airfoil wall, and setting the airfoil wall temperature to the value of the fluid inlet temperature in order to reduce the computational time. On convergence of the analysis, the efficiency of the airfoil and the pressure differential across the airfoil is determined and if it is not within an acceptable range, the solid model is modified in a attempt to improves this result and the modified solid model is re-analyzed using the same process until the airfoil efficiency and the pressure differential is within the acceptable range.