Isogeometric simulation of turbine blades for aircraft engines

Isogeometric analysis is a novel approach to numerical simulation that has the potential to bridge the gap between geometric design and numerical analysis. It uses the same exact geometry representation in all stages of the product development. In this paper we present recent results which demonstrate the competitiveness of the new concept in an industrial environment, more precisely, in the challenging field of aircraft engines. We study the deformation of turbine blades under the assumption of linear elasticity by considering all major loads and boundary conditions of a standard mechanical simulation process for turbine blades. We use the numerical approximations obtained by the classical finite element method as a benchmark for the capabilities of the new concept. It is shown that it is able to reach comparable results using only a small fraction of the number of degrees of freedom required by the classical method. Thus, isogeometric analysis allows using much coarser geometric representations for numerical simulation.