Multistage Low Pressure Turbine Airfoil Shape Optimization using the C 3 Process

3 process uses commercial CAD and meshing software in conjunction with a 3D multistage computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code to analyze and optimize airfoil shapes. The C 3 process takes advantage of a simple gradient-based optimization method adapted for parallel computing to shape airfoils for a three stage LPT. The paper reviews the CFD- based performance results of baseline and optimized designs.