Theoklis Nikolaidis

Toward a Scalable Propeller Performance Map

Propeller performance is traditionally represented by a performance map that gives propeller efficiency as a function of the flight Mach number, the power coefficient CP, and the advance ratio J. This work aims to demonstrate how this map changes when the design CP and J change and to propose a novel map format that is able to capture the performance of different propeller designs. For this purpose, the propeller performance is simulated using a propeller lifting-line method validated for the SR3 propfan. Subsequently, the propeller model is used within a sequential quadratic programming framework to optimize the blade twist and chord distribution for different sets of design CP and J. A complete propeller performance map is then generated for each one of the optimized designs. The results demonstrate that all the investigated propellers can be modeled by a common map, which determines separately the ideal efficiency and the viscous losses. The ideal efficiency is given in the traditional format of ηi=f(C...

The effect of water ingestion on an axial flow compressor performance

The aero-thermodynamic effects of water ingestion on an axial flow compressor performance are presented in this article. Under adverse weather conditions, gas turbine engine performance deteriorates and in extreme cases, this performance deterioration may result in flameout or shutdown of the engine, which means that serious incidents or possibly accidents may occur. When the water droplets enter into the engine they break up into smaller droplets which may bounce, coalesce or splash onto the compressor blades. They also form a liquid film whose motion is influenced by inertia forces, blade friction, aerodynamic drag and pressure gradient. The water liquid film has considerable effects on blade’s geometric characteristics. Apart from the change in its profile due to thickness increase, air shear force and water droplets momentum cause waves in water film’s surface introducing a kind of ‘roughness’ on blade’s surface. The current work focuses on the aero-thermodynamic effects. Its methodology is based on computational fluid dynamics, which is used to solve the flow field of the computational domain. The model consists of an extended inlet, an inlet guide vane, a rotor and a stator blade. Several cases with water ingestion are solved, varying the parameter of water mass and engine rotational speed, simulating adverse weather conditions. On the rotor blade, the water film height and speed are calculated at the equilibrium condition. This condition is achieved when the water mass which flows out of the blade surface equals with this which impacts on it. Taking into account the film thickness at each computational node of the blade surface, the blade’s geometry is changed. Furthermore, an equivalent roughness is introduced and the effects on compressor’s performance are calculated. It is found that deterioration is more pronounced in low rotational speed. For 4% water/air, compressor’s isentropic efficiency deteriorates 8.5% for idle speed and 1.6% for full speed. For the same water mass, mass flow capacity deteriorates 2.4% at idle speed while the change is small for full speed.

Water Film Formation on an Axial Flow Compressor Rotor Blade

A numerical approach was used to evaluate the liquid water film thickness and its motion on an axial flow compressor rotor blade under water ingestion conditions. By post-processing blading data and using computer programs to create the blades and their computational grid, the global computational domain of the first stage of an axial flow compressor was built. The flow field within the domain was solved by CFX-Tascflow, which is a commercial CFD code commonly used in turbomachinery. The computational domain consists of an extended inlet, an inlet guide vane, a rotor and a stator blade. Having solved the flow field at Design Point, the inlet guide vane blade was re-positioned to account for changes in idle speed. At that speed, the effects of water ingestion are expected to be more significant on gas turbine engine performance. Several cases with water ingestion were studied, changing parameters like water mass and compressor rotational speed. A FORTRAN computer program was created to calculate the water film height and speed. The extra torque needed by the compressor to keep running at the same rotational speed, was also calculated. The considerable increase in torque was confirmed by experimental observations according to which water ingestion had a detrimental effect on gas turbine operation.Copyright

Application of Bio-fAEG: A Biofouling Assessment Model in Gas Turbines and the Effect of Degraded Fuels on Engine Performance Simulations

The recent advances for flexible fuel operation and the integration of biofuels and blends in gas turbines raise concern on engine health and quality. One of such potential threats involves the contamination and the growth of microorganisms in fuels and fuel systems with consequential effect on engine performance and health. In the past, the effects of microbial growth in fuels have been qualitatively described; however their effects in gas turbines have not necessarily been quantified. In this paper, the effects of fuel deterioration are examined on a simulated aero-derivative gas turbine. A diesel-type fuel comprising of thirteen (13) hydrocarbon fractions was formulated and degraded with Bio-fAEG, a bio fouling assessment model that defines degraded fuels for performance simulation and analysis, predicts biodegradation rates as well as calculates the amount of water required to initiate degradation under aerobic conditions. The degraded fuels were integrated in the fuel library of Turbomatch (v2.0) and a twin shaft gas turbine was modeled for fuel performance analysis. The results indicate a significant loss in performance with reduced thermal efficiency of 1% and 10.4% and increased heat rate of 1% and 11.6% for the use of 1% and 10% degraded fuels respectively. Also parameters such as exhaust gas temperature and mass flow deviated from the baseline data indicating potential impact on engine health. Therefore, for reliable and safe operation, it is important to ensure engines run on good quality of fuel.This computational study provides insights on fuel deterioration in gas turbines and how it affects engine health.Copyright

Numerical simulation of the airflow over a military aircraft with active intake

The aim of the study presented herein is to numerically predict the behaviour of the airflow around a flying military aircraft with an active intake in which the airflow may enter and travel all the way up to the aerodynamic interface plane (the analytical interface between the inlet and engine). Computational fluid dynamics is used as the basic tool. The geometry created consists of a full-scale military aircraft exposed to different flight conditions. The flow results are mainly focused at the aerodynamic interface plane since the present study is a part of a greater research effort to estimate how the airflow distortion induced to the engine’s face due to the aircraft’s flight attitude, affects the embedded gas turbine’s performance. The obtained results were validated through a direct comparison against similar experimental ones, collected from a wind tunnel environment.

Stability assessment of an airflow distorted military engine’s FAN

Military aircraft are often subjected to severe flight maneuvers with high angles of attack and angles of sideslip. These flight attitudes induce non-uniformity in flow conditions to their gas turbine engines, which may include distortion of inlet total pressure and total temperature at the aerodynamic interface plane. Operation of the downstream engine’s compression system may suffer reduced aerodynamic performance and stall margin, and increased blade stress levels. The present study presents a methodology of evaluating the effect of inlet flow distortion on the engine’s fan stability. The flow distortion examined was induced to the aerodynamic interface plane by means of changing the aircraft’s flight attitude. The study is based on the steady-state flow results from 27 different flight scenarios that have been simulated in computational fluid dynamics. As a baseline model geometry, an airframe inspired by the General Dynamics/LMAERO F-16 aircraft was chosen, which has been exposed to subsonic incoming airflow with varying direction resembling thus different aircraft flight attitudes. The results are focused on the total pressure distribution on the engine’s (aerodynamic interface plane) face and how this is manifested at the operation of the fan. Based on the results, it was concluded that the distorted conditions cause a shift of the surge line on the fan map, with the amount of shift to be directly related to the severity of these distorted conditions. The most severe flight attitude in terms of total pressure distortion, among the tested ones, caused about 7% surge margin depletion comparing to the undistorted value.

Recursive least squares for online dynamic identification on gas turbine engines

NLINE identification for a gas turbine engine is vital for health monitoring and control decisions because the engine electronic control system uses the identified model to analyze the performance for optimization of fuel consumption, a response to the pilot command, as well as engine life protection. Since a gas turbine engine is a complex system and operating at variant working conditions, it behaves nonlinearly through different power transition levels and at different operating points. An adaptive approach is required to capture the dynamics of its performance. Dynamic identification for gas turbine engines is mostly carried by frequency analysis through the experiments with sinusoidal fuel input. From the research by Evans et al. [1], different frequency responses are shown at different operating points [1]. A set of estimated functions is used for representation over the full operating range. For the process of simplification, an adaptive approach needs to be implemented so that the estimated model can be evolved along with the change of engine dynamics. Isermann et al. [2] compared six methods commonly used in the industry, and most of the online methods were based on the theory of least squares and likelihood [2]. These methods are particularly favored to the online identification because of their simplicity and computing efficiency. They did not require iterations and training like neural networks, but the accuracy of these methods was sometimes compromised. The recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm is well known for tracking dynamic systems. Torres et al. [3] attempted to identify the dynamic of the gas turbine engine offline, mainly at steady states with stochastic signals. Arkov et al. [4] focused on real-time identification for transient operations and concluded that an engine system could be averaged to a time-invariant firstor second-order transfer function by the extended RLS [4]. The tracking speed and accuracy for the RLS could be improved with a different design of forgetting factors. The effect of using a forgetting factor was to shift the estimating average toward the most recent data, such as that in the work by Paleologu et al. [5]. In this paper, classic and modified RLS

Effect of steam addition on the flow field and NOx emissions for Jet-A in an aircraft combustor

Abstract The steam injection technology for aircraft engines is gaining rising importance because of the strong limitations imposed by the legislation for NOx reduction in airports. In order to investigate the impact of steam addition on combustion and NOx emissions, an integrated performance-CFD-chemical reactor network (CRN) methodology was developed. The CFD results showed steam addition reduced the high temperature size and the radical pool moved downstream. Then different post-processing techniques are employed and CRN is generated to predict NOx emissions. This network consists of 14 chemical reactor elements and the results were in close agreement with the ICAO databank. The established CRN model was then used for steam addition study and the results showed under air/steam mixture atmosphere, high steam content could push the NOx formation region to the post-flame zone and a large amount of the NOx emission could be reduced when the steam mass fraction is quite high.

System Level Performance and Emissions Evaluation of Renewable Fuels for Jet Engines

Incessant demand for fossil derived energy and the resulting environmental impact has urged the renewable energy sector to conceive one of the most anticipated sustainable, alternative “drop-in” fuels for jet engines, called as, Bio-Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (Bio-SPKs). Second (Camelina SPK & Jatropha SPK and third generation (Microalgae SPK) advanced biofuels have been chosen to analyse their influence on the behaviour of a jet engine through numerical modelling and simulation procedures. The thermodynamic influence of each of the biofuels on the gas turbine performance extended to aircraft performance over a user-defined trajectory (with chosen engine/airframe configuration) have been reported in this paper. Initially, the behaviour of twin-shaft turbofan engine operated with 100% Bio-SPKs at varying operating conditions. This evaluation is conducted from the underpinning phase of adopting the chemical composition of Bio-SPKs towards an elaborate and careful prediction of fluid thermodynamics properties (FTPs). The engine performance was primarily estimated in terms of fuel consumption which steers the fiscal and environmental scenarios in civil aviation. Alternative fuel combustion was virtually simulated through stirred-reactor approach using a validated combustor model. The system-level emissions (CO2 and NOx) have been numerically quantified and reported as follows: the modelled aircraft operating with Bio-SPKs exhibited fuel economy (mission fuel burn) by an avg. of 2.4% relative to that of baseline (Jet Kerosene). LTO-NOx for the user-defined trajectory decreased by 7–7.8% and by 15–18% considering the entire mission. Additionally, this study reasonably qualitatively explores the benefits and issues associated with Bio-SPKs.Copyright