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Grid for a turbine stage CFD Codes for Turbomachinery, Dr. Rodrick V. Chima, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, USA Pressure contours on a turbine stage
CFD CODES HOME BUTTON
GRAPE: 2-D GRIDS BUTTON
RVCQ3D: Q-3-D ANALYSIS BUTTON
TCGRID: 3-D GRIDS BUTTON
SWIFT: 3-D ANALYSIS BUTTON
REFERENCES BUTTON
AUTHOR BUTTON
TURBOMACHINERY BRANCH BUTTON
INLETS & NOZZLES BRANCH BUTTON

Overview

Four computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes have been developed for analysis of flows in turbomachinery. The codes were developed by Dr. Rodrick V. Chima at NASA Glenn Research Center. They have been validated and have been heavily used at NASA Glenn and in U.S. industries and universities for a wide variety of problems including analysis of the Space Shuttle main engine turbopumps, the design of transonic fan blades, and the analysis of pumps. The four codes are:

  1. GRAPE is a 2-D elliptic grid generation code used with RVCQ3D. GRAPE was originally intended for airfoils but has been heavily modified for turbomachinery blades.
  2. RVCQ3D is a quasi-3-D Navier-Stokes code for the analysis of blade-to-blade flows in turbomachinery. It includes the effects of rotation, radius change, and variable stream surface thickness.
  3. TCGRID is a 3-D grid generation code used with Swift and other turbomachinery CFD codes. TCGRID generates C- or H-type grids around arbitrary blade shapes and in tip clearance regions.
  4. Swift is a full 3-D Navier-Stokes code for the analysis of flows around turbomachinery blades. Swift has limited multiblock capability for tip clearance flows and multistage blade rows.

The codes are written in Fortran 90 and will compile and run on most computers. Namelist input is used and some printed output is generated. No graphical output is provided, but solutions files can be read directly and plotted using CFD visualization codes like PLOT3D, FAST, EnSight, FIELDVIEW, or TecPlot.

Availability

The codes are available to universities or companies within the United States, free of charge. See the references section of this site for code documentation and technical papers about the codes. For more information about any of the codes, please contact me by phone or e-mail using the information below.

To obtain GRAPE or RVCQ3D, send me a brief letter of request by mail on your company letterhead, or by e-mail from a company or university e-mail address. University students should have their faculty advisor request these codes. I will contact you by e-mail and let you know how to download the codes from our anonymous ftp site.

To obtain TCGRID or Swift, please visit the NASA Glenn Software Repository.

http://technology.grc.nasa.gov/software/

*** Please note that NASA regulations prohibit dissemination of these codes outside the U. S. ***

Contact

Dr. Rodrick V. Chima
M.S. 5-12
NASA Glenn Research Center
21000 Brookpark Rd.
Cleveland, Ohio 44135 USA

voice: (216) 433-5919
fax:     (216) 433-5802
email:  Rodrick.V.Chima@nasa.gov
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Curator: Rod Chima
NASA Official: Mary Jo Long-Davis
Last Updated: 02/28/2008