Purpose The purpose of this paper is the development of a new turbocharger compressor is a challenging task particularly when both wider operating range and higher efficiency are required. However, the cumbersome design effort and the inherent calculus burden can be significantly reduced by using appropriate design optimization approaches as an alternative to conventional design techniques. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents an optimization-based preliminary-design (OPD) approach based on a judicious coupling between evolutionary optimization techniques and a modified one-dimensional mean-line model. Two optimization strategies are considered. The first one is mono-objective and is solved using genetic algorithms. The second one is multi-objective and it is handled using the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II. The proposed approach constitutes an automatic search process to select the geometrical parameters of the compressor, ensuring the most common requirements of the preliminary-design phase, with a minimum involvement of the designer. Findings The obtained numerical results demonstrate that the proposed tool can rapidly produce nearly optimal designs as an excellent basis for further refinement in the phase by using more complex analysis methods such as computational fluid dynamics and meta-modeling. Originality/value This paper outlines a new fast OBPD approach for centrifugal compressor turbochargers. The proposal adopts an inverse design method and consists of two main phases: a formulation phase and a solution phase. The complexity of the formulated problem is reduced by using a sensitivity analysis. The solution phase requires to link, in an automatic way, three processes, namely, optimization, design and analysis.

Preliminary design of centrifugal compressors is an emphasized step, which initiates the design process. Even with the use of quick analysis methods such as one-dimensional models, preliminary design still occupies a substantial part of the total design time. Among the factors that can lengthen this time or even cause the design failure is the inappropriate selection of the design input parameters. The present paper proposes a methodology to generate optimal inputs for the preliminary design, which reduces the design time and optimizes its overall performance. This is achieved, firstly, by performing an aerothermodynamic analysis that defines the appropriate input parameters, which will be used by a preliminary design code. This analysis has allowed identifying three pilot parameters (inlet relative Mach number, work input factor, and slip factor) to guide the generation of adequate input parameters. This input parameter generator, which reduces considerably the failure rate, is then exploited efficiently in an optimization process considering the pilot parameters as decision variables. Therefore, the proposed input parameter generator is coupled with a preliminary design code and an optimization algorithm. The proposed input parameter generator was validated on four existing compressors, showing a gain of more than 90% of the design time. Mainly, the proposed optimization has created a preliminary design trade-off having the target requirements and with optimized off-design performance.

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