This paper is concerned with a quasi-3D design method for centrifugal compressor impeller in the meridional plane. The method links up a novel inverse design algorithm, called Ball-Spine Algorithm (BSA), and a quasi-3D analysis code. The Euler equation is solved on the meridional plane for a numerical domain of which some unknown boundaries (hub and shroud) are iteratively modified under the BSA until a prescribed pressure distribution is reached. In BSA, the unknown walls are composed of a set of virtual balls that move freely along the specified directions called spines. The difference between target and current pressure distribution causes to deform flexible boundary at each modification step. In order to validate the quasi-3D analysis code, an existing compressor is investigated by some experiments in which several static pressure points on the shroud, the flow parameters at the compressor inlet and outlet are measured. Comparison of the quasi-3D analysis results with experimental results shows good agreement. Also, a full 3D Navier-Stokes code is used to analyze the existing and designed compressor numerically. The results show that the momentum decrease near the shroud wall in the existing compressor is removed by hub-shroud modification resulting an improvement in performance by 0.6 percent.

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