A Novel Post-Processing Platform for 2D Steady and Unsteady Flows in Turbomachines

The paper presents a novel post-processing platform, AERO-POST, for two-dimensional steady and unsteady flow fields around turbomachinery blade rows. AERO-POST is a data manipulation facility, with a number of associated translators to read CFD results from a library of codes and experimental/numerical databases, and with a collection of conventions and associated automatic convertions so that numerical and experimental data can be rapidly compared in a consistent way. A number of specialized and well validated post-processing and visualization tools for unsteady flows around vibrating blade rows and relatively moving blade rows (aerodynamic damping and other unsteady aerodynamic coefficients, influence coefficients, stability parameter, stability maps,…) are also implemented to scrutinize unsteady CFD results. AERO-POST currently supports a library of ten CFD codes and three experimental/numerical databases, and three graphics libraries/packages. The program internal data structure and architecture is designed to support the storage of multi-dimensional variables with data attributes grouped into multiple data sets, and an extensive range of CFD reading routines, data manipulation tools and graphics libraries. Collectively, these features provide a set of powerful and original post-processing options allowing users to compare and investigate their CFD results more efficiently than with classical plotting softwares. These original post-processing and plotting options are illustrated on a series of applications.