Patent ID: 7454321

Claim:
A method for design of a rotating machinery airfoil, the method comprising: providing an initial airfoil shape; providing a statement of at least one objective that a final airfoil shape must satisfy; providing a statement of at least one constraint that the final airfoil shape must satisfy; using computational fluid dynamics (“CFD”) to estimate a pressure value at each of at least two selected perimeter locations for the initial airfoil shape; using a neural network/support vector machine (“NN/SVM”) and CFD to determine a modified airfoil shape and a corresponding pressure value change, from a pressure value determined for the initial airfoil shape, at the two or more airfoil perimeter locations, in response to change of a portion of the airfoil shape in a neighborhood of the corresponding perimeter location; and providing at least one of an alphanumeric description and a graphical description of at least one version of the modified airfoil shape as the final airfoil shape.