The StreamVane™ swirl distortion generator, developed by Virginia Tech, can efficiently reproduce the boundary layer of an airframe or duct found in boundary layer ingesting (BLI) aircraft. Due to manufacturing limitations, the vanes within StreamVanes induce unsteady, vortical wakes, commonly known as a von Karman vortex street. This paper investigates the use of a commercial URANS code and SST turbulence model to predict the vortex shedding frequency from the vanes. The objective was accomplished in two main tasks. First, the CFD methodology was validated by modeling the fluid dynamics of a linear cascade experiment done by the von Karman Institute. Second, the same methodology was applied to airfoils used in StreamVane design to calculate the shedding frequency as a function of turning angle and TE thickness. It was predicted that an increase in turning angle exponentially increased the shedding frequency while an increase in TE thickness exponentially decreased the shedding frequency. The results provided a correlation between the shedding frequency and airfoil characteristics in StreamVanes as well as various turbomachinery components.
Boundary layer ingestion (BLI) concepts have become a prominent topic in research and development due to their increase in fuel efficiency for aircraft. Virginia Tech has developed the StreamVane™, a secondary flow distortion generator, which can be used to efficiently test BLI and its aeromechanical effects on turbomachinery. To ensure the safety of this system, the complex vanes within StreamVanes must be further analyzed structurally and aerodynamically. In this paper, the induced strain of two common vane shapes at three different operating conditions is computationally determined. Along with these predictions, the aerodynamic damping of the vanes is calculated to predict flutter conditions at the same three operating points. To achieve this, steady CFD calculations are done to acquire the aerodynamic pressure loading on the vanes. Finite element analysis (FEA) is performed to obtain the strain and modal response of the StreamVane structure. The mode shapes and steady CFD are used to initialize an unsteady CFD analysis which acquires the aerodynamic damping results of the vanes. The testcase used for this evaluation was specifically designed to overstep the structural limits of a StreamVane, and the results provide an efficient computational method to observe flutter conditions of stationary systems.
Boundary layer ingestion (BLI) concepts have become a prominent topic in research and development due to their increase in fuel efficiency for aircraft. Virginia Tech has developed the StreamVane™, a secondary flow distortion generator, which can be used to efficiently test BLI and its aeromechanical effects on turbomachinery. To ensure the safety of this system, the complex vanes within StreamVanes must be further analyzed structurally and aerodynamically. In this paper, the induced strain of two common vane shapes at three different operating conditions is computationally determined. Along with these observations, the aerodynamic damping of these vanes are calculated to predict flutter conditions at the same three operating points. Steady CFD calculations are done to acquire the aerodynamic pressure loading on the vanes. Finite element analysis (FEA) is performed to obtain the strain and modal response of the StreamVane structure. The mode shapes and steady CFD are used to initialize an unsteady CFD analysis which determines the aerodynamic damping of the vanes. The testcase used for this evaluation was specifically designed to overstep the structural limits of a StreamVane, and the results provide an efficient computational method to observe flutter conditions of stationary systems.
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