Impeller

The impeller is used in many types of turbo-machinery. This particular impeller is used in a multistage compressor. Each impeller consisted of 6 full blades and 6 splitters (i.e. half blades).

GTO were asked to develop the design of the impeller to meet the requirements of normal working loads and that natural frequencies were beyond an excitable range.


The acceptance criteria were:

Stresses should be below the material yield (specified by the client) for a given max rotational speed.

Resonant frequencies should not be below 1000Hz. GTO developed a detailed solid parametric finite element model of the impeller.

A linear static analysis with angular velocity loading was performed in ANSYS to predict stresses. This was followed by a pre-stressed modal analysis to calculate the natural frequencies and mode shapes.

GTO successfully developed and verified the design of the impeller.