Optimal Blade Design of Stator Based on Adjoint Fluid Topology Optimization Method in a Torque Converter

Abstract

Traditional forward design method for blade of hydrodynamic torque converter is limited by empirical design so that it is difficult to produce innovative blade design results. Based on the adjoint sensitivity, an unconventional optimization blade design method, Adjoint Fluid Topology Optimization method was proposed. Based on this method, a directional topological optimization of stator blade design was carried out as an example to achieve a better torque ratio performance for torque converter under stalling condition. Such optimization method can achieve irregular stator blade with better performance. Moreover, the flow energy distribution before and after such topology optimization are further studied, the results show that the optimized torque ratio is increased by 9.99% under stalling condition when comparing with the original design result, and the irregular blade result has a more reasonable distribution of flow energy, indicating that fluid topology optimization can not only get rid of the restriction of forward blade design method and provide an innovation way for irregular blade design, but also improve the potential performance of turbomachinery.