CFD in Collaborative, Multidisciplinary Design of Propulsion Systems and Stationary Gas Turbines

The development of modern propulsion systems and stationary gas turbines requires a tightly integrated multidisciplinary environment in which geometry generation, simulation, and analysis interact consistently. Within the DLR Virtual Engine ecosystem GTlab, the CFD suite TRACE is integrated to realize a seamless workflow from parametric design to results analysis.

The presented prototype addresses key challenges of collaborative work: different disciplines require discipline-specific geometries, large CFD datasets place a heavy load on central data servers, and TRACE simulations must be executed efficiently on remote HPC clusters. By means of remote processing, remote HDF5 access, flexible geometry post-processing pipelines, and the use of standardized STEP exports with metadata (including surface names for boundary conditions), a scalable workflow for mesh generation, setup, simulation, and analysis is established.

The integration of the TRACE suite, including pre- and post-processing and automated embedding of results into the central data hub, demonstrates how collaborative, data-driven CFD workflows can significantly accelerate and improve the consistency of multidisciplinary design of future turbomachinery.