Tomas Grönstedt

Assessment of Future Aero-engine Designs With Intercooled and Intercooled Recuperated Cores

Reduction in CO2 emissions is strongly linked with the improvement of engine specific fuel consumption, as well as the reduction in engine nacelle drag and weight. Conventional turbofan designs, however, that reduce CO2 emissions—such as increased overall pressure ratio designs—can increase the production of NOx emissions. In the present work, funded by the European Framework 6 collaborative project NEW Aero engine Core concepts (NEWAC), an aero-engine multidisciplinary design tool, Techno-economic, Environmental, and Risk Assessment for 2020 (TERA2020), has been utilized to study the potential benefits from introducing heat-exchanged cores in future turbofan engine designs. The tool comprises of various modules covering a wide range of disciplines: engine performance, engine aerodynamic and mechanical design, aircraft design and performance, emissions prediction and environmental impact, engine and airframe noise, as well as production, maintenance and direct operating costs. Fundamental performance differences between heat-exchanged cores and a conventional core are discussed and quantified. Cycle limitations imposed by mechanical considerations, operational limitations and emissions legislation are also discussed. The research work presented in this paper concludes with a full assessment at aircraft system level that reveals the significant potential performance benefits for the intercooled and intercooled recuperated cycles. An intercooled core can be designed for a significantly higher overall pressure ratio and with reduced cooling air requirements, providing a higher thermal efficiency than could otherwise be practically achieved with a conventional core. Variable geometry can be implemented to optimize the use of the intercooler for a given flight mission. An intercooled recuperated core can provide high thermal efficiency at low overall pressure ratio values and also benefit significantly from the introduction of a variable geometry low pressure turbine. The necessity of introducing novel lean-burn combustion technology to reduce NOx emissions at cruise as well as for the landing and take-off cycle, is demonstrated for both heat-exchanged cores and conventional designs. Significant benefits in terms of NOx reduction are predicted from the introduction of a variable geometry low pressure turbine in an intercooled core with lean-burn combustion technology.

Design and Analysis of an Intercooled Turbofan Engine

The performance of an intercooled turbofan engine is analysed by multidisciplinary optimization. A model for making preliminary simplified analysis of the mechanical design of the engine is coupled to an aircraft model and an engine performance model. A conventional turbofan engine with technology representative for a year 2013 entry of service is compared with a corresponding intercooled engine. A mission fuel burn reduction of 3.4% is observed. The results are analysed in terms of the relevant constraints such as compressor exit blade height. It is shown that the gas path of an intercooled engine for medium range commericial transport applications, having an overall pressure ratio greater than 70 in top of climb, may still be optimized to fulfil a compressor exit blade height constraint. This indicates that a state of the art high pressure compressor efficiency can be achieved. Empirical data and a parametric CFD study is used to verify the intercooler heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics.

Multidisciplinary Analysis of a Geared Fan Intercooled Core Aero-Engine

The reduction of CO2 emissions is strongly linked with the improvement of engine specific fuel consumption, along with the reduction of engine nacelle drag and weight. One alternative design approach to improving specific fuel consumption is to consider a geared fan combined with an increased overall pressure ratio intercooled core performance cycle. The thermal benefits from intercooling have been well documented in the literature. Nevertheless, there is very little information available in the public domain with respect to design space exploration of such an engine concept when combined with a geared fan. The present work uses a multidisciplinary conceptual design tool to analyze the option of an intercooled core geared fan aero engine for long haul applications with a 2020 entry into service technology level assumption. With minimum mission fuel in mind, the results indicate as optimal values a pressure ratio split exponent of 0.38 and an intercooler mass flow ratio of 1.18 at hot-day top of climb conditions. At ISA midcruise conditions a specific thrust of 86 m/s, a jet velocity ratio of 0.83, an intercooler effectiveness of 56%, and an overall pressure ratio value of 76 are likely to be a good choice. A 70,000 lbf intercooled turbofan engine is large enough to make efficient use of an all-axial compression system, particularly within a geared fan configuration, but intercooling is perhaps more likely to be applied to even larger engines. The proposed optimal jet velocity ratio is actually higher than the value one would expect by using standard analytical expressions, primarily because this design variable affects core efficiency at midcruise due to a combination of several different subtle changes to the core cycle and core component efficiencies at this condition. The analytical expressions do not consider changes in core efficiency and the beneficial effect of intercooling on transfer efficiency, nor do they account for losses in the bypass duct and jet pipe, while a relatively detailed engine performance model, such as the one utilized in this study, does. Mission fuel results from a surrogate model are in good agreement with the results obtained from a rubberized-wing aircraft model for some of the design parameters. This indicates that it is possible to replace an aircraft model with specific fuel consumption and weight penalty exchange rates. Nevertheless, drag count exchange rates have to be utilized to properly assess changes in mission fuel for those design parameters that affect nacelle diameter.

Optimization Study of an Intercooled Recuperated Aero-Engine

The design space of an intercooled recuperated aero-engine has been explored using detailed engine and aircraft performance, weight, and dimensions modeling. The design parameters of the engine fan, core, intercooler, recuperator, cooling-air ratio, and variable-geometry settings for the low-pressure turbine have been optimized for minimum mission fuel. Analysis shows that the improvement achieved in terms of performance against the datum design can be attributed primarily to an increase in thermal efficiency. A parametric study has also been carried out around the optimal design to understand the impact of the chosen design parameters on mission fuel burn. The study demonstrates in detail the substantially more complex interrelationship that the different fan design parameters have in terms of engine performance compared to what is typical for conventional turbofan designs. Furthermore, the optimal pressure ratio split between the low-pressure compressor and the high-pressure compressor aligns well with a previous analytical study. It is also revealed that the increased amount of cooling air required when a hot bleeding concept is adopted is in fact beneficial for mission fuel burn. Finally, the study concludes that the potential of using variable geometry in the low-pressure turbine for improving fuel burn is limited by the high-pressure turbine blade-metal temperature.

First and Second Law Analysis of Future Aircraft Engines

An optimal baseline turbofan cycle designed for a performance level expected to be available around year 2050 is established. Detailed performance data are given in take-off, top of climb, and cruise to support the analysis. The losses are analyzed, based on a combined use of the first and second law of thermodynamics, in order to establish a basis for a discussion on future radical engine concepts and to quantify loss levels of very high performance engines. In light of the performance of the future baseline engine, three radical cycles designed to reduce the observed major loss sources are introduced. The combined use of a first and second law analysis of an open rotor engine, an intercooled recuperated engine, and an engine working with a pulse detonation combustion core is presented. In the past, virtually no attention has been paid to the systematic quantification of the irreversibility rates of such radical concepts. Previous research on this topic has concentrated on the analysis of the turbojet and the turbofan engine. In the developed framework, the irreversibility rates are quantified through the calculation of the exergy destruction per unit time. A striking strength of the analysis is that it establishes a common currency for comparing losses originating from very different physical sources of irreversibility. This substantially reduces the complexity of analyzing and comparing losses in aero engines. In particular, the analysis sheds new light on how the intercooled recuperated engine establishes its performance benefits.

Conceptual Design and Mission Analysis for a Geared Turbofan and an Open Rotor Configuration

In this multidisciplinary study a geared open rotor configuration is assessed and compared to an ultra high bypass ratio geared turbofan engine. Both designs assume a 2020 entry into service level of technology. The specific thrust level for minimizing block fuel and the resulting engine emissions for a given mission is sought. The tool used contains models that effectively capture: engine performance, mechanical and aerodynamic design, engine weight, emissions, aircraft design and performance as well as direct operating costs. The choice of specific thrust is a complex optimization problem and several disciplines need to be considered simultaneously. It will be demonstrated, through multidisciplinary analysis, that the open rotor concept can offer a substantial fuel saving potential, compared to ducted fans, for a given set of design considerations and customer requirements.

Identifiability in Multi-Point Gas Turbine Parameter Estimation Problems

A method for estimating performance parameters in jet engines with limited instrumentation has been developed. The technique is applied on a nonlinear steady state performance code by making simultaneous use of a number of off-design operating points. A hybridized optimization tool using a genetic algorithm to obtain an initial estimate of the performance parameters, and a gradient method to refine this estimate, has been implemented. The method is tested on a set of simulated data that would be available during performance testing of a PW100 engine. The simulated data is generated assuming realistic noise levels. The technique has been successfully applied to the estimation of ten performance parameters using six simulated measurement signals. The determination of identifiability (the property governing whether the performance parameters of the model can be uniquely determined from the measured data) and the selection of parameters in the performance model has been based on the analysis of the system Hessian, i.e. the multidimensional second derivative of the goal function. It is shown, theoretically as well as in practice, how the process of selecting model parameters can be approached in a systematic manner when nonlinear multi-point problems are studied.Copyright

Ultra Low Emission Technology Innovations for Mid-century Aircraft Turbine Engines

Commercial transport fuel efficiency has improved dramatically since the early 1950s. In the coming decades the ubiquitous turbofan powered tube and wing aircraft configuration will be challenged by diminishing returns on investment with regards to fuel efficiency. From the engine perspective two routes to radically improved fuel efficiency are being explored; ultra-efficient low pressure systems and ultra-efficient core concepts. The first route is characterized by the development of geared and open rotor engine architectures but also configurations where potential synergies between engine and aircraft installations are exploited. For the second route, disruptive technologies such as intercooling, intercooling and recuperation, constant volume combustion as well as novel high temperature materials for ultra-high pressure ratio engines are being considered. This paper describes a recently launched European research effort to explore and develop synergistic combinations of radical technologies to TRL 2. The combinations are integrated into optimized engine concepts promising to deliver ultra-low emission engines. The paper discusses a structured technique to combine disruptive technologies and proposes a simple means to quantitatively screen engine concepts at an early stage of analysis. An evaluation platform for multidisciplinary optimization and scenario evaluation of radical engine concepts is outlined.

First and Second Law Analysis of Intercooled Turbofan Engine

Although the benefits of intercooling for aero-engine applications have been realized and discussed in many publications, quantitative details are still relatively limited. In order to strengthen the understanding of aero-engine intercooling, detailed performance data on optimized intercooled (IC) turbofan engines are provided. Analysis is conducted using an exergy breakdown, i.e., quantifying the losses into a common currency by applying a combined use of the first and second law of thermodynamics. Optimal IC geared turbofan engines for a long range mission are established with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based two-pass cross flow tubular intercooler correlations. By means of a separate variable nozzle, the amount of intercooler coolant air can be optimized to different flight conditions. Exergy analysis is used to assess how irreversibility is varying over the flight mission, allowing for a more clear explanation and interpretation of the benefits. The optimal IC geared turbofan engine provides a 4.5% fuel burn benefit over a non-IC geared reference engine. The optimum is constrained by the last stage compressor blade height. To further explore the potential of intercooling the constraint limiting the axial compressor last stage blade height is relaxed by introducing an axial radial high pressure compressor (HPC). The axial–radial high pressure ratio (PR) configuration allows for an ultrahigh overall PR (OPR). With an optimal top-of-climb (TOC) OPR of 140, the configuration provides a 5.3% fuel burn benefit over the geared reference engine. The irreversibilities of the intercooler are broken down into its components to analyze the difference between the ultrahigh OPR axial–radial configuration and the purely axial configuration. An intercooler conceptual design method is used to predict pressure loss heat transfer and weight for the different OPRs. Exergy analysis combined with results from the intercooler and engine conceptual design are used to support the conclusion that the optimal PR split exponent stays relatively independent of the overall engine PR.

Conceptual Design of a Mid-Sized Semi-Closed Oxy-Fuel Combustion Combined Cycle

This paper presents the study of a mid-sized semi-closed oxy-fuel combustion combined cycle (SCOC-CC) with net power output around 108 MW. The paper describes not only the power balance and the performance of the SCOC-CC, but also the conceptual design of the SCOC turbine and compressor. A model has been built in the commercial heat and mass balance code IPSEpro to estimate the efficiency of semi-closed dual-pressure oxy-fuel combustion combined cycle using natural gas as a fuel. In order to obtain the real physical properties of the working fluids in IPSEpro, the code was linked to the NIST Reference Fluid Thermodynamic and Transport Properties Database (REFPROP). The oxy-fuel turbine was modeled with the in-house Lund University package LUAX-T. Important features such as stage loading, loss modeling, cooling and geometric features were included to generate more accurate results. The oxy-fuel compressor has been modeled using a Chalmers university in-house tool for conceptual design of axial compressors. The conceptual design of the SCOC-CC process has a net efficiency of 47 %. The air separation unit and CO2 compression reduce the cycle efficiency by 10 and 2 percentage points, respectively. A single-shaft configuration was selected for the gas turbine simplicity. The rotational speed chosen was 5200 rpm and the turbine was designed with four stages. All stage preliminary design parameters are within ranges of established industrial axial turbine design limits. The main issue is the turbine exit Mach number; the stage must be lightly loaded in terms of pressure ratio to maintain the exit Mach number below 0.6. The compressor is designed with 18 stages. The current value of the product of the annulus area and the blade rotational speed squared (AN2) was calculated and found to be 40*10^6.