Designing the geometry of a gas turbine exhaust diffuser on the basis of fluid dynamics information

An article of manufacture for designing a gas turbine exhaust diffuser, the article of manufacture comprising a non-transitory, non-volatile tangible computer-readable medium holding computer-executable instructions for performing a method comprising:

• receiving an initial diffuser design;
• performing a design refinement process comprising:
• designating portions of the initial diffuser design for modification;
• generating a new diffuser design by modifying the portions of the initial diffuser design designated for modification;
• determining a fluid velocity pattern associated with the new diffuser design;
• computing a plurality of particle tracing lines through an internal portion of the new diffuser design using the fluid velocity pattern;
• grouping the plurality of particle tracing lines into a plurality of particle line bundles extending longitudinally within the new diffuser design;
• computing a plurality of average paths, each average path corresponding to one of the particle line bundles;
• for each respective average path, generating a rigid tube of a plurality of rigid tube, the rigid tube configured to channel gases through the internal portion of the new diffuser design wherein the channeled flow of gases reduces areas of stagnation and low pressure inside the diffuser increasing overall gas turbine efficiency;
• and
• adding each rigid tube of the plurality of rigid tubes to the new diffuser design.

A computer-implemented method for designing a gas turbine exhaust diffuser, the method comprising:

• identifying, by a first computer, an initial diffuser design;
• performing, by a parallel computing parallel computing architecture, a design refinement process comprising:
• executing multiple instances of a computational fluid model generation module in parallel to generate a plurality of alternative diffuser designs;
• executing multiple instances of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation module in parallel to generate a fluid velocity pattern for each of the plurality of alternative diffuser designs;
• generating one or more rigid tubes configured to channel gas flow for each of the plurality of alternative diffuser designs according to the corresponding fluid velocity pattern for each respective alternative diffuser design wherein the channeled flow of gases reduces areas of stagnation and low pressure inside the diffuser increasing overall gas turbine efficiency.