Penn State Has Adopted AxSTREAM Software to Teach Turbomachinery Design

BURLINGTON, Massachusetts: SoftInWay Inc. and the Pennsylvania State University have signed an agreement about the incorporation of the educational version of AxSTREAM software for turbomachinery flow path design, optimization and analysis into the University’s curriculum.

According to this software license agreement, students from the Penn State Engineering Department will be able to learn the basics of turbomachinery flow path design using AxSTREAM. The software includes modules for preliminary design, 1D/2D analysis, design and multidisciplinary optimization of flow path, profiling, 3D blade stacking and 3D FEA/CFD analysis. AxSTREAM Educational Version supports four types of machines: axial turbine, axial compressor, radial turbine and radial compressor.

As a result of this AxSTREAM course, the Penn State students will gain a practical understanding of the design and optimization of axial/radial turbomachinery that will become a good educational background and raise their competitiveness in the engineering job market.

Today AxSTREAM Educational Version is successfully used by the teaching community worldwide. Only in the first part of 2009 three universities were granted access to the educational suite: Tsinghua University (China), Namik Kemal University (Turkey) and Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding (Ukraine).

“We are honored to partner with the Pennsylvania State University, as it is one of the world's leading universities in turbomachinery design, widely-known for its College of Engineering,” – stated Leonid Moroz, President and CEO of SoftInWay Inc. – “Our relationship with Penn State is critical for both parties, as we firmly believe that AxSTREAM will add depth to the turbomachinery teaching process and help students develop the skills they will need for rewarding engineering careers.”

Dr. Horacio Perez-Blanco, Professor of Mechanical Engineering who has more than 30 years of teaching experience, commented upon the adoption of AxSTREAM: “We are pleased to announce our agreement to employ AxSTREAM for teaching Gas Turbines and Turbomachinery during the academic year F09-SP10, as this software covers the advanced design aspects that other courses don’t. From my expertise, after the students have completed hand calculations for one stage, it is ideal for teaching multiple stage design, as meanline analysis is the appropriate introductory description to the topic, and AxSTREAM produces meanline and streamline analysis of axial and radial turbomachines, given suitable boundary conditions. Besides, instruction of 3D aspects of design with the sole aid of the blackboard and projector is a vexing endeavor, requiring much visualization and adoption of hypothesis concerning the flow behavior, while AxSTREAM allows ready visualization and modification of the spanwise shape distribution. We project that students will gain a much better understanding of 3D considerations using the visual and analytical tools provided by SoftInWay.”