Experimental Study of Suction Flow Control Effectiveness in a Serpentine Intake

2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Keerthi ◽  
Abhijit Kushari ◽  
Valliammai Somasundaram

The intakes of modern aircraft are subjected to ever-increasing demands in their performance. Particularly, they are expected to carry out diffusion with the highest isentropic efficiency while subjected to aggressive geometry requirements arising from stealth considerations. To avoid a penalty in engine performance, the flow through intake needs to be controlled using various methods of flow control. In this study, a serpentine intake is studied experimentally and its performance compared with and without boundary layer suction. The performance parameters used are nondimensional total pressure loss coefficient and standard total pressure distortion descriptors. The effect is observed on surface pressure distributions, and inferences are made regarding separation location and extent. A detailed measurement at the exit plane shows flow structures that draw attention to secondary flows within the duct. Suction is applied at three different locations, spanning different number of ports along each location, comprising of ten unique configurations. The mass flow rate of suction employed ranges from 1.1% to 6.7% of mass flow rate at the inlet of the intake. The effect is seen on exit total pressure recovery as well as circumferential and radial distortion parameters. This is examined in the context of the location of the suction ports and amount of suction mass flow, by the deviation in surface pressure distributions, as well as the separation characteristics from the baseline case. The results show that applying suction far upstream of the separation point together with a modest amount of suction downstream results in the best performance.

Author(s):  
Yabo Wang ◽  
Yanping Song ◽  
Jianyang Yu ◽  
Fu Chen

Abstract The effect of five arrangements of the double-slot injections on the leakage flow control is studied in a honeycomb-tip turbine cascade numerically. The honeycomb tip is covered with 67 intact honeycomb cavities, since the uneven tip is wearable and the cavity vortex could realize the aerodynamic sealing for the leakage flow. Then in the present study, a pair of injection slots is arranged blow each cavity, aiming to enhance the leakage flow suppression by modifying the cavity vortex. According to the orientation of the two slots, five designs of the double-slot injections are proposed. In detail, the two slots are opposite to each other or keep tangential to the original cavity vortex roughly. The three dimensional calculations were completed by using Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) method and the k-ω turbulence model in the commercial software ANSYS CFX. The estimation of these tip designs is mainly according to the tip leakage mass flow rate and the total pressure loss. Firstly, the injection structures induced by the slots can be divided into X- and T-types inside the cavity. The results show that the T-type structure is more effective in reducing the tip leakage mass flow rate, with the maximum reduction up to 48.2%. Then the effect on the flow field inside the gap and the secondary flow in the upper passage is analyzed. Compared with the flat tip, the span-wise position of the tip leakage vortex core drops within the cascade and the range of the affected loss region expands. At the cascade exit, the tip leakage vortex moves toward the passage vortex near the casing, while the latter’s core rises. The position changes of the secondary vortices eventually determine the total pressure loss contour downstream the cascade. Finally, the injection total pressure and the upper casing motion are investigated. Interestingly, the injection intensity (mass flow rate) increases with the injection total pressure but this value decreases as the casing speed increases. The tip leakage mass flow rate decreases linearly as increasing the injection total pressure or the casing speed. Yet the averaged total pressure loss downstream the cascade increases with the injection total pressure but appears a nonlinear distribution against the casing speed.


Author(s):  
Brian M. T. Tang ◽  
Marko Bacic ◽  
Peter T. Ireland

This paper presents a computational investigation into the impact of cooling air injected through the stationary over-tip turbine casing on overall turbine efficiency. The high work axial flow turbine is representative of the high pressure turbine of a civil aviation turbofan engine. The effect of active modulation of the cooling air is assessed, as well as that of the injection locations. The influence of the through-casing coolant injection on the turbine blade over-tip leakage flow and the associated secondary flow features are examined. Transient (unsteady) sliding mesh simulations of a one turbine stage rotor-stator domain are performed using periodic boundary conditions. Cooling air configurations with a constant total pressure air supply, constant mass flow rate and actively controlled total pressure supply are assessed for a single geometric arrangement of cooling holes. The effects of both the mass flow rate of cooling air and the location of its injection relative to the turbine rotor blade are examined. The results show that all of the assessed cooling configurations provided a benefit to turbine row efficiency of between 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points. The passive and constant mass flow rate configurations reduced the over-tip leakage flow, but did so in an inefficient manner, with decreasing efficiency observed with increasing injection mass flow rate beyond 0.6% of the mainstream flow, despite the over-tip leakage mass flow rate continuing to reduce. By contrast, the active total pressure controlled injection provided a more efficient manner of controlling this leakage flow, as it permitted a redistribution of cooling air, allowing it to be applied in the regions close to the suction side of the blade tip which more directly reduced over-tip leakage flow rates and hence improved efficiency. Cooling air injected close to the pressure side of the rotor blade was less effective at controlling the leakage flow, and was associated with increased aerodynamic loss in the passage vortex.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamisu A Dandajeh ◽  
Talib O Ahmadu

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the influence of engine speed on the combustion characteristics of a Gardener compression ignition engine fueled with rapeseed methyl esther (RME). The engine has a maximum power of 14.4 kW and maximum speed of 1500 rpm. The experiment was carried out at speeds of 750 and 1250 rpm under loads of 4, 8, 12, 16 and 18 kg. Variations of cylinder pressure with crank angle degrees and cylinder volume have been examined. It was found that RME demonstrated short ignition delay primarily due to its high cetane number and leaner fuel properties (equivalence ratio (φ) = 0.22 at 4kg). An increase in thermal efficiency but decrease in volumetric efficiency was recorded due to increased brake loads. Variations in fuel mass flow rate, air mass flow rate, exhaust gas temperatures and equivalence ratio with respect to brake mean effective pressure at engine speeds of 750 and 1250 rpm were also demonstrated in this paper. Higher engine speed of 1250 rpm resulted in higher fuel and air mass flow rates, exhaust temperature, brake power and equivalent ratio but lower volumetric efficiency. Keywords— combustion characteristics, engine performance, engine speed, rapeseed methyl Esther


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raghuvaran D. ◽  
Satvik Shenoy ◽  
Srinivas G

Abstract Axial flow fans (AFF) are extensively used in various industrial sectors, usually with flows of low resistance and high mass flow rates. The blades, the hub and the shroud are the three major parts of an AFF. Various kinds of optimisation can be implemented to improve the performance of an AFF. The most common type is found to be geometric optimisation including variation in number of blades, modification in hub and shroud radius, change in angle of attack and blade twist, etc. After validation of simulation model and carrying out a grid independence test, parametric analysis was done on an 11-bladed AFF with a shroud of uniform radius using ANSYS Fluent. The rotational speed of the fan and the velocity at fan inlet were the primary variables of the study. The variation in outlet mass flow rate and total pressure was studied for both compressible and incompressible ambient flows. Relation of mass flow rate and total pressure with inlet velocity is observed to be linear and exponential respectively. On the other hand, mass flow rate and total pressure have nearly linear relationship with rotational speed. A comparison of several different axial flow tracks with the baseline case fills one of the research gaps.


Author(s):  
Nikhil M. Rao ◽  
Cengiz Camci

An experimental study of a turbine tip desensitization method based on tip coolant injection was conducted in a large-scale rotating turbine rig. One of twenty-nine rotor blades was modified and instrumented to have a tip trench with discrete injection holes directed towards the pressure side. Time accurate absolute total pressure was measured 0.3 chord lengths downstream of the rotor exit plane using a fast response dynamic pressure sensor in a phase-locked manner. The test cases presented include results for tip gap heights of 1.40% and 0.72% of the blade height, and coolant injection rates of 0.41%, 0.52%, 0.63%, and 0.72% core mass flow rate. At a gap height of 1.40% the leakage vortex is large, occupying about 15% blade span. A reduction in gap height causes the leakage vortex to reduce in size and move towards the blade suction side. The minimum total pressure measured, for the reduced gap, in the leakage vortex is about 4% greater. Coolant injection from the tip trench is successful in filling in the total pressure defect originally resulting from the leakage vortex without injection. At the higher tip injection rates the leakage vortex is also seen to have moved towards the blade tip. The high momentum associated with the tip jets affects the total pressure distributions in the neighboring passages.


Author(s):  
Jiarui Zhang ◽  
Zhixun Xia ◽  
Liya Huang ◽  
Likun Ma

To predict engine performance and further instruct the integral engine design, a more reasonable and accurate numerical model of the two-phase underwater ramjet was introduced in this article by considering the bubble formation process. Two-fluid model was used to examine the bubbly flow in the nozzle and its mathematical model was solved by a fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. Subsequently, the influences of vessel velocity, gas mass flow rate, navigational depth, and orifice diameter of the bubble injector on the performance of the engine were discussed. Results show that, compared with convergent nozzle, Laval nozzle is proved to improve the thrust of the engine, especially at relatively high velocity and gas mass flow rate. With the other conditions fixed, there is an optimum vessel velocity for the ramjet, in which maximum thrust is generated. And a smaller orifice diameter always promotes the engine performance, while this promotion is negligible when the orifice diameter is smaller than 1 mm. Besides, increasing backpressure will cause serious performance drop, which means that the the two-phase underwater ramjet is only efficient for shallow depths.


Author(s):  
Shuai Shao ◽  
Qinghua Deng ◽  
Zhenping Feng

In this paper, an aerodynamic optimization of the radial inflow turbine for a 100kW-class micro gas turbine is conducted based on the metamodel-semi-assisted idea. The idea is applied by first using the metamodel as a rapid exploration tool and then switching to the accurate optimization without metamodel for further exploration of the design space [1]. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to drive the optimization process and the BP neural network is used to construct the metamodel. The optimization of this radial inflow turbine is divided into two parts, the stator optimization and the rotor optimization. The stator optimization is based on the accurate optimization strategy. The minimum total pressure loss of the stator and the maximum isentropic total-to-static efficiency of the stage are considered as the objective functions with constant mass flow rate as a constraint. The rotor optimization is conducted through the metamodel-semi-assisted idea. The maximum power output and isentropic total-to-static efficiency of the stage are considered as objective functions while keeping the mass flow rate to be constant. The accurate optimization system is demonstrated to be effective for the stator optimization, and the total pressure loss is reduced by 11.6% while the mass flow rate variation is less than 1%. The rotor optimization is conducted based on the metamodel-semi-assisted optimization and the results confirm the effectiveness of this new idea. The output power of the rotor increased by 1.5%, the isentropic total-to-static efficiency of the stage increased by 1.19% and the mass flow variation is less than 1%.


This study involves the analysis of the performance improvement of the air-cooled SI engine by controlling the charge temperature. The insulated intake manifold has been used to maintaining the charge temperature at the atmospheric temperature level. The effect of variation in intake air temperature coming from atmospheric temperature on the engine performance in terms of brake mean effective pressure, engine power, engine torque are investigated. The result indicated that the mass flow rate of air is increased after using cold and insulated air intake system with average air density of 1.174 kg/m3. This improved air intake mass flow rate increased the brake torque and a reduction in exhaust gas emission. The result shows when the air-fuel mixture allowed for combustion at atmospheric intake air temperature (30ºC), the engine produces 1.2003 kW power and 5.7314 N-m torque at 2000 rpm. The engine performance calculated at an engine speed of 1000, 1500 and 2000 rpm.


Author(s):  
AmirMahdi Tahsini ◽  
Seyed Saeid Nabavi

The response of the solid fuel ramjet to the imposed excitations of the ambient pressure is investigated using full part computation of the system including the intake, combustion chamber, and exhaust nozzle. The finite volume solver of the turbulent reacting compressible flow is used to simulate the flow field, where two grid blocks are considered for discretizing the computational domain. Both impulsive and oscillatory excitations are imposed to predict the response of the solid fuel mass flow rate. The results demonstrate that strong fuel flow overshoot occurs in the case of sudden impulsive excitation which is omitted for gradual impulsive excitations. In addition, the oscillatory excitations eventually lead to regular oscillatory response with frequencies similar to the imposed excitations and decrease the average fuel mass flow rate independent of the excitation frequency. But the amplitude of the response depends on the excitation frequency and amplification occurs in some frequencies. This behavior is not related to the combustion instabilities and is similar to the L-star instability in the solid rocket motors. In the design and analysis of the solid fuel ramjets, the coupling of the flight dynamics and the engine performance must be considered, and this study is the first step of such complete methodology to have more accurate predictions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Rosa Taddei ◽  
Francesco Larocca

Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations with blade blockage and blade force source terms are solved in the meridional plane of complete axial flow turbomachinery using a finite-volume scheme. The equations of the compressible actuator disk (AD) are introduced to modify the evaluation of the convective fluxes at the leading and trailing edges (LEs and TEs). An AD behaves as a compact blade force which instantaneously turns the flow with no production of unphysical entropy. This avoids unphysical incidence loss across the LE discontinuity and allows for application of all of the desired deviation at the TE. Unlike previous treatments, the model needs no handmade modification of the throughflow (TF) surface and does not discriminate between inviscid and viscous meridional flows, which allows for coping with strong incidence gradients through the annulus wall boundary layers and with secondary deviation. This paper derives a generalized blade force term that includes the contribution of the LE and TE ADs in the divergence form of the TF equations and leads to generalized definitions of blade load, blade thrust, shaft torque, and shaft power. In analyzing a linear flat plate cascade with an incidence of 32 deg and a deviation of 21 deg, the proposed model provided a 105 reduction of unphysical total pressure loss compared to the numerical solution with no modeling. The computed mass flow rate, blade load, and blade thrust showed excellent agreement with the theoretical values. The complete RANS TF solver was used to analyze a four-stage turbine in design and off-design conditions with a spanwise-averaged incidence of up to 2 deg and 43 deg, respectively. Compared to a traditional streamline curvature solution, the RANS solution with incidence and deviation modeling provided a 0.1 to 0.7% accurate prediction of mass flow rate, shaft power, total pressure ratio, and adiabatic efficiency in both the operating conditions. It also stressed satisfactory agreement concerning the spanwise distributions of flow angle and Mach number at LEs and TEs. In particular, secondary deviation was effectively predicted. The RANS solution with no modeling showed acceptable performance prediction only in design conditions and could introduce no deviation.


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