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At least 73 records · Page 4

Steady and Transient Performance Prediction of Gas Turbine Engines

This Lecture Series covers topics of aero-thermodynamic performance prediction methods for gas turbine engines with respect to steady and transient operation. This includes advanced cycle calculation methods, also taking into account variable cycle engine types. A very important objective is the consideration of installation effect, i.e., Reynolds number and inlet distortions, as well as advanced control concepts for increasing engine surge margins. In addition to these topics, individual papers include practical considerations in developing the engine cycle, dynamic simulation, inlet distortion effects in aircraft propulsion system integration, “smart” engines, performance and heal monitoring models. This Lecture Series, sponsored by the Propulsion and Energetics Panel of AGARD and the Consultant and Exchange Programme of AGARD presented on 27th -28th May 1992 in Cambridge, MA, United States, 9th-10th June 1992 in Neubiberg, Germany and 11th-12th June 1992 in Chàtillon/Bagneux (near Paris), France

Aircraft engines↗

UHB Engine Fan Broadband Noise Reduction Study

A study has been completed to quantify the contribution of fan broadband noise to advanced high bypass turbofan engine system noise levels. The result suggests that reducing fan broadband noise can produce 3 to 4 EPNdB in engine system noise reduction, once the fan tones are eliminated. Further, in conjunction with the elimination of fan tones and an increase in bypass ratio, a potential reduction of 7 to 10 EPNdB in system noise can be achieved. In addition, an initial assessment of engine broadband noise source mechanisms has been made, concluding that the dominant source of fan broadband noise is the interaction of incident inlet boundary layer turbulence with the fan rotor. This source has two contributors, i.e., unsteady life dipole response and steady loading quadrupole response. The quadrupole contribution was found to be the most important component, suggesting that broadband noise reduction can be achieved by the reduction of steady loading field-turbulence field quadrupole interaction. Finally, for a controlled experimental quantification and verification, the study recommends that further broadband noise tests be done on a simulated engine rig, such as the GE Aircraft Engine Universal Propulsion Simulator, rather than testing on an engine statically in an outdoor arena The rig should be capable of generating forward and aft propagating fan noise, and it needs to be tested in a large freejet or a wind tunnel.

Gliebe, Philip R.↗

Advanced Control Considerations for Turbofan Engine Design

This paper covers the application of a model-based engine control (MBEC) methodology featuring a self tuning on-board model for an aircraft turbofan engine simulation. The nonlinear engine model is capable of modeling realistic engine performance, allowing for a verification of the advanced control methodology over a wide range of operating points and life cycle conditions. The on-board model is a piece-wise linear model derived from the nonlinear engine model and updated using an optimal tuner Kalman Filter estimation routine, which enables the on-board model to self-tune to account for engine performance variations. MBEC is used here to show how advanced control architectures can improve efficiency during the design phase of a turbofan engine by reducing conservative operability margins. The operability margins that can be reduced, such as stall margin, can expand the engine design space and offer potential for efficiency improvements. Application of MBEC architecture to a nonlinear engine simulation is shown to reduce the thrust specific fuel consumption by approximately 1% over the baseline design, while maintaining safe operation of the engine across the flight envelope.

control↗

Annual Research Briefs, 2002: Center for Turbulence Research

Turbulent combustion remains the largest component of the CTR's core program. This program and several related activities at CTR are supported by NASA's Ultra Efficient Engine Technology Program. It is also intimately connected with the Department of Energy's ASCI program at Stanford which develops the technology for numerical simulation of realistic aircraft engines using state of the art massively parallel computers. In combustion modeling the attention has been directed to the modeling of higher levels of complexity such as spray dynamics, radiation and soot formation. Major aircraft engine manufacturers have shown considerable interest in this program; in particular, a significant active collaboration exists between CTR and the Pratt & Whitney Corporation. CTR's combustion program is essentially based on the large-eddy simulation technique, LES, which is actively being pursued at CTR for this and many other applications. Important accomplishments in LES included simulations with three-dimensional filters which result in grid independent calculations (that is why we call it "true" LES), and the development of the methodology for integration of LES and Reynolds Averaged computations. Optimization techniques are being studied and used for the important problem of wall boundary conditions for LES as well as for optimal shape design for aeroacoustic and aerodynamic performance gains.

ULTRA EFFICIENT ENGINE TECHNOLOGY↗

A simulator investigation of the influence of engine response characteristics on the approach and landing for an externally blown flap aircraft. Part 1: Description of the simulation and discussion of results

Investigation of the influence of engine response characteristics on approach and landing operations of a powered lift aircraft were carried out in a piloted ground-based simulator. The aircraft simulated was a four engine, externally-blown jet-flap configuration having an 80 pound wing loading and .56 thrust to weight ratio. Results indicate that for ideal operating conditions and minimal pilot reaction delay, substantial reductions in engine-out wave-off altitude increment and touchdown sink rate for engine-out landings can be achieved with the fast engine compared to the slow engine response. However, delays in pilot reaction of one to two seconds diminish the advantage of rapid thrust response. A need exists for some form of automatic cueing of the pilot or automatic engine control to enable the potential of rapid thrust response to be realized in improving safety in the event of an engine failure.

Franklin, J. A.↗

Motion-base simulator study of control of an externally blown flap STOL transport aircraft after failure of an outboard engine during landing approach

A moving-base simulator investigation of the problems of recovery and landing of a STOL aircraft after failure of an outboard engine during final approach was made. The approaches were made at 75 knots along a 6 deg glide slope. The engine was failed at low altitude and the option to go around was not allowed. The aircraft was simulated with each of three control systems, and it had four high-bypass-ratio fan-jet engines exhausting against large triple-slotted wing flaps to produce additional lift. A virtual-image out-the-window television display of a simulated STOL airport was operating during part of the investigation. Also, a simple heads-up flight director display superimposed on the airport landing scene was used by the pilots to make some of the recoveries following an engine failure. The results of the study indicated that the variation in visual cues and/or motion cues had little effect on the outcome of a recovery, but they did have some effect on the pilot's response and control patterns.

Middleton, D. B.↗

Aircraft Engine Icing Event Avoidance and Mitigation Through Real-Time Simulation and Controls

A process for mitigating or proactively avoiding an aircraft engine icing event may include detecting ice crystals in the atmosphere using one or more sensors on board an aircraft in real time. The process may also include modulating one or more engine operating conditions to proactively change an ice accretion location, to avoid the occurrence of an icing event. The process may further include implementing one or more modulated engine operating conditions in engine controls software, hardware, or both.

Veres, Joseph P.↗

A model propulsion simulator for evaluating counter rotating blade characteristics

Three Model Propulsion Simulators (MPS) were designed and built to evaluate candidate counterrotation Ultra bypass fan model blade designs of nominally 2-ft (0.61 m) tip diameter for an advanced 'pusher-type' aircraft engine. These propulsion simulators (nominally 1/5 engine size) are capable of operation over a wide range of subsonic conditions and can deliver up to 750 shaft horsepower per rotor at rotor speeds of 10,000 rpm. The rotor thrust and torque, dynamic blade stresses, and system temperature data are transmitted through an integral telemetry system to facilitate data acquisition. Salient features of the design, instrumentation, and operation of these simulators are described in this paper.

Delaney, B. R.↗

Low-speed wind tunnel performance of high-speed counterrotation propellers at angle-of-attack

The low-speed aerodynamic performance characteristics of two advanced counterrotation pusher-propeller configurations with cruise design Mach numbers of 0.72 were investigated in the NASA Lewis 9- by 15-Foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel. The tests were conducted at Mach number 0.20, which is representative of the aircraft take-off/landing flight regime. The investigation determined the effect of nonuniform inflow on the propeller performance characteristics for several blade angle settings and a range of rotational speeds. The inflow was varied by yawing the propeller model to angle-of-attack by as much as plus or minus 16 degrees and by installing on the counterrotation propeller test rig near the propeller rotors a model simulator of an aircraft engine support pylon and fuselage. The results of the investigation indicated that the low-speed performance of the counterrotation propeller configurations near the take-off target operating points were reasonable and were fairly insensitive to changes in model angle-of-attack without the aircraft pylon/fuselage simulators installed on the propeller test rig. When the aircraft pylon/fuselage simulators were installed, small changes in propeller performance were seen at zero angle-of-attack, but fairly large changes in total power coefficient and very large changes of aft-to-forward-rotor torque ratio were produced when the propeller model was taken to angle-of-attack. The propeller net efficiency, though, was fairly insensitive to any changes in the propeller flowfield conditions near the take-off target operating points.

Hughes, Christopher E.↗

Low-speed wind tunnel performance of high-speed counterrotation propellers at angle-of-attack

The low-speed aerodynamic performance characteristics of two advanced counterrotation pusher-propeller configurations with cruise design Mach numbers of 0.72 were investigated in the NASA Lewis 9- by 15-Foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel. The tests were conducted at Mach number 0.20, which is representative of the aircraft take/off/landing flight regime. The investigation determined the effect of nonuniform inflow on the propeller performance characteristics for several blade angle settings and a range of rotational speeds. The inflow was varied by yawing the propeller mode to angle-of-attack by as much as plus or minus 16 degrees and by installing on the counterrotation propeller test rig near the propeller rotors a model simulator of an aircraft engine support pylon and fuselage. The results of the investigation indicated that the low-speed performance of the counterrotation propeller configurations near the take-off target operating points were reasonable and were fairly insensitive to changes in model angle-of-attack without the aircraft pylon/fuselage simulators installed on the propeller test rig. When the aircraft pylon/fuselage simulators were installed, small changes in propeller performance were seen at zero angle-of-attack, but fairly large changes in total power coefficient and very large changes of aft-to-forward-rotor torque ratio were produced when the propeller model was taken to angle-of-attack. The propeller net efficiency, though, was fairly insensitive to any changes in the propeller flowfield conditions near the take-off target operating points.

Hughes, Christopher E.↗

Structural Life and Reliability Metrics: Benchmarking and Verification of Probabilistic Life Prediction Codes

Over the past two decades there has been considerable effort by NASA Glenn and others to develop probabilistic codes to predict with reasonable engineering certainty the life and reliability of critical components in rotating machinery and, more specifically, in the rotating sections of airbreathing and rocket engines. These codes have, to a very limited extent, been verified with relatively small bench rig type specimens under uniaxial loading. Because of the small and very narrow database the acceptance of these codes within the aerospace community has been limited. An alternate approach to generating statistically significant data under complex loading and environments simulating aircraft and rocket engine conditions is to obtain, catalog and statistically analyze actual field data. End users of the engines, such as commercial airlines and the military, record and store operational and maintenance information. This presentation describes a cooperative program between the NASA GRC, United Airlines, USAF Wright Laboratory, U.S. Army Research Laboratory and Australian Aeronautical & Maritime Research Laboratory to obtain and analyze these airline data for selected components such as blades, disks and combustors. These airline data will be used to benchmark and compare existing life prediction codes.

Litt, Jonathan S.↗

Common Analysis Tool Being Developed for Aeropropulsion: The National Cycle Program Within the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation Environment

The NASA Lewis Research Center is developing an environment for analyzing and designing aircraft engines-the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS). NPSS will integrate multiple disciplines, such as aerodynamics, structure, and heat transfer, and will make use of numerical "zooming" on component codes. Zooming is the coupling of analyses at various levels of detail. NPSS uses the latest computing and communication technologies to capture complex physical processes in a timely, cost-effective manner. The vision of NPSS is to create a "numerical test cell" enabling full engine simulations overnight on cost-effective computing platforms. Through the NASA/Industry Cooperative Effort agreement, NASA Lewis and industry partners are developing a new engine simulation called the National Cycle Program (NCP). NCP, which is the first step toward NPSS and is its initial framework, supports the aerothermodynamic system simulation process for the full life cycle of an engine. U.S. aircraft and airframe companies recognize NCP as the future industry standard common analysis tool for aeropropulsion system modeling. The estimated potential payoff for NCP is a $50 million/yr savings to industry through improved engineering productivity.

Follen, Gregory J.↗

Aviation Safety Modeling and Simulation (ASMM) Propulsion Fleet Modeling: A Tool for Semi-Automatic Construction of CORBA-based Applications from Legacy Fortran Programs

Within NASA's Aviation Safety Program, NASA GRC participates in the Modeling and Simulation Project called ASMM. NASA GRC s focus is to characterize the propulsion systems performance from a fleet management and maintenance perspective by modeling and through simulation predict the characteristics of two classes of commercial engines (CFM56 and GE90). In prior years, the High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) program funded, NASA Glenn in developing a large scale, detailed simulations for the analysis and design of aircraft engines called the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS). Three major aspects of this modeling included the integration of different engine components, coupling of multiple disciplines, and engine component zooming at appropriate level fidelity, require relatively tight coupling of different analysis codes. Most of these codes in aerodynamics and solid mechanics are written in Fortran. Refitting these legacy Fortran codes with distributed objects can increase these codes reusability. Aviation Safety s modeling and simulation use in characterizing fleet management has similar needs. The modeling and simulation of these propulsion systems use existing Fortran and C codes that are instrumental in determining the performance of the fleet. The research centers on building a CORBA-based development environment for programmers to easily wrap and couple legacy Fortran codes. This environment consists of a C++ wrapper library to hide the details of CORBA and an efficient remote variable scheme to facilitate data exchange between the client and the server model. Additionally, a Web Service model should also be constructed for evaluation of this technology s use over the next two- three years.

Sang, Janche↗

Low cost training aids and devices

The need for advanced flight simulators for two engine aircraft is discussed. Cost effectiveness is a major requirement. Other training aids available for increased effectiveness are recommended. Training aids include: (1) audio-visual slides; (2) information transfer; (3) programmed instruction; and (4) interactive training systems.

Lawver, J.↗

Optimal Discrete Event Supervisory Control of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engines

This report presents an application of the recently developed theory of optimal Discrete Event Supervisory (DES) control that is based on a signed real measure of regular languages. The DES control techniques are validated on an aircraft gas turbine engine simulation test bed. The test bed is implemented on a networked computer system in which two computers operate in the client-server mode. Several DES controllers have been tested for engine performance and reliability.

Litt, Jonathan↗

Determination of the Rate Coefficients of the SO2 plus O plus M yields SO3 plus M Reaction

Rate coefficients of the title reaction R(sub 31) (SO2 +O+M yields SO3 +M) and R(sub 56) (SO2 + HO2 yields SO3 +OH), important in the conversion of S(IV) to S(VI),were obtained at T =970-1150 K and rho (sub ave) = 16.2 micro mol/cubic cm behind reflected shock waves by a perturbation method. Shock-heated H2/ O2/Ar mixtures were perturbed by adding small amounts of SO2 (1%, 2%, and 3%) and the OH temporal profiles were then measured using laser absorption spectroscopy. Reaction rate coefficients were elucidated by matching the characteristic reaction times acquired from the individual experimental absorption profiles via simultaneous optimization of k(sub 31) and k(sub 56) values in the reaction modeling (for satisfactory matches to the observed characteristic times, it was necessary to take into account R(sub 56)). In the experimental conditions of this study, R(sub 31) is in the low-pressure limit. The rate coefficient expressions fitted using the combined data of this study and the previous experimental results are k(sub 31,0)/[Ar] = 2.9 10(exp 35) T(exp ?6.0) exp(?4780 K/T ) + 6.1 10(exp 24) T(exp ?3.0) exp(?1980 K/T ) cm(sup 6) mol(exp ?2)/ s at T = 300-2500 K; k(sub 56) = 1.36 10(exp 11) exp(?3420 K/T ) cm(exp 3)/mol/s at T = 970-1150 K. Computer simulations of typical aircraft engine environments, using the reaction mechanism with the above k(sub 31,0) and k(sub 56) expressions, gave the maximum S(IV) to S(VI) conversion yield of ca. 3.5% and 2.5% for the constant density and constant pressure flow condition, respectively. Moreover, maximum conversions occur at rather higher temperatures (?1200 K) than that where the maximum k(sub 31,0) value is located (approximately 800 K). This is because the conversion yield is dependent upon not only the k(sup 31,0) and k(sup 56) values (production flux) but also the availability of H, O, and HO2 in the system (consumption flux).

Hwang, S. M.↗

A Nonlinear Propulsion System Simulation Technique for Piloted Simulators

In the past, propulsion system simulations used in flight simulators have been extremely simple. This resulted in a loss of simulation realism since significant engine and aircraft interactions were neglected and important internal engine parameters were not computed. More detailed propulsion system simulators are needed to permit evaluations of modern aircraft propulsion systems in a simulated flight environment. A real time digital simulation technique has been developed which provides the capabilities needed to evaluate propulsion system performance and aircraft system interaction on manned flight simulators. A parameter correlation technique is used with real and pseudo dynamics in a stable integration convergence loop. The technique has been applied to a multivariable propulsion system for use in a piloted NASA flight simulator program. Cycle time is 2.0 ms on a Univac 1110 computer and 5.7 ms on the simulator computer, a Xerox Sigma 8. The model is stable and accurate with time steps up to 50 ms. The program evaluated the simulation technique and the propulsion system digital control. The simulation technique and model used in that program are described and results from the simulation are presented.

Mihaloew, J. R.↗