The ultra-compact combustor (UCC) has the potential to offer improved thrust-to-weight and overall efficiency in a turbojet engine. The thrust-to-weight improvement is due to a reduction in engine weight by shortening the combustor section through the use of the revolutionary circumferential combustor design. The improved efficiency is achieved by using an increased fuel-to-air mass ratio and allowing the fuel to fully combust prior to exiting the UCC system. Furthermore, g-loaded combustion offers increased flame speeds that can lead to smaller combustion volumes. One of the issues with the UCC is that the circumferential combustion of the fuel results in hot gases present at the outside diameter of the core flow. These hot gases need to migrate radially from the circumferential cavity and blend with the core flow to present a uniform temperature distribution to the high-pressure turbine rotor. The current research focused on correlations to control the UCC cavity velocity, control the temperature profile throughout the UCC section, analyze the exhaust species exiting the combustor, and quantify pressure losses in the system. To achieve these goals, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was used on a UCC geometry scaled to a representative fighter-scale engine. The analysis included a study of cavity to core flow interaction characteristics, a 5- and 12-species combustion model of liquid and gaseous fuel, and determination of species exiting the combustor. Computational comparisons were also made between an engine realistic condition and an ambient pressure rig environment.
Compact military-grade jet engines offer many potential applications, including use in remotely piloted vehicles, but can be expensive to use for research and development purposes. A study aimed at increasing the power and thrust output of an inexpensive commercial compact engine found a material limitation issue in the turbomachinery. To gain the additional power, hotter turbine inlet temperatures were required. This temperature increase exceeded the limit of current uncooled metal turbine rotors but could be achieved through turbine rotors made from ceramics, such as silicon nitride, which would allow an increase in the thrust and power output by a factor of 1.44. Current ceramic turbine manufacturing methods are costly and time consuming for rapid prototyping, but recent breakthroughs in ceramic additive manufacturing have allowed for cheaper methods and faster production which are beneficial for use in research and development when designs are being rapidly changed and tested. This research demonstrated, through finite element analysis, that a silicon nitride turbine rotor could meet the increased turbine inlet temperature conditions to provide the desired thrust and power increase. Further, as a proof of concept, an additively manufactured drop-in replacement alumina turbine rotor was produced for the JetCat P400 small-scale engine in a manner that was cost-effective, timely, and potentially scalable for production. This compact engine was used to demonstrate that a cost-effective ceramic turbine could be manufactured. At the time of publication, the desired ceramic material, silicon nitride, was not available for additive manufacturing.
The ultra-compact combustor (UCC) is an innovative combustor system alternative to traditional turbine engine combustors with the potential for engine efficiency improvements with a reduced volume. Historically, the UCC cavity had been configured such that highly centrifugally loaded combustion took place in a recessed circumferential cavity positioned around the outside diameter (OD) of the engine. One of the obstacles with this design was that the combustion products had to migrate radially across the span of a vane while being pushed downstream by a central core flow. This configuration proved difficult to produce a uniform temperature distribution at the first turbine rotor. The present study has taken a different spin on the implementation of circumferential combustion. Namely, it aims to combine the combustion and space saving benefits of the highly centrifugally loaded combustion of the UCC in a new combustor orientation that places the combustor axially upstream of the turbine versus radially outboard. An iterative design approach was used to computationally analyze this new geometry configuration with the goal of fitting within the casing of a JetCat P90RXi. This investigation revealed techniques for implementation of this concept including small-scale combustor centrifugal air loading development, maintaining combustor circumferential swirl, combustion stability, and fuel distribution are reported. The final combustor configuration was manufactured and experimentally tested, validating the computational results. Furthermore, dramatic improvements in the uniformity of the turbine inlet temperature profiles are revealed over historical UCC concepts.
The ultra compact combustor (UCC) aims to increase the thrust-to-weight ratio of an aircraft gas turbine engine by decreasing the size, and thus weight, of the engine’s combustor. The configuration of the UCC as a primary combustor enables a unique cooling scheme to be employed for the hybrid guide vane (HGV). A previous effort conducted a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis that evaluated whether it would be possible to cool this vane by drawing in freestream flow at the stagnation region of the airfoil. Based on this study, a cooling scheme was designed and modified with internal supports to make additive manufacturing of the vanes possible. This vane was computationally evaluated comparing the results with those of a solid vane and hollow vane without cooling holes as a demonstration of the improvements offered by this design. Furthermore, the effects of the internal support structure were deemed beneficial to surface cooling when evaluated through comparisons of internal pressure distribution and overall effectiveness. Following the computational study, the vane was manufactured and experimentally evaluated with the results compared to those of an uncooled solid vane. The experimental results validated the computational analysis and demonstrated through pressure and temperature measurements that the cooled vane had a reduced surface temperature compared to the uncooled vane and that pressure distributions supported coolant flow through film-cooling holes.
This study quantified the performance and fluid disbursal capabilities of several fluidic oscillator variations injecting from the face of a backward-facing step. These devices were designed as a replacement for a pair of nonoscillating fuel injector jets in an ultra-compact combustor. However, these results have relevance whenever fluid is injected from the face of a backward-facing step making the oscillator performance widely applicable. The oscillators were tested with and without coflow and at varying coflow velocities, which controlled the strength of the recirculation behind the backward-facing step. The fluidic oscillators investigated included single as well as paired oscillators that produced in-phase and out-of-phase synchronized jets. The injected fluid disbursal was found to be dependent on the velocity ratio of the freestream air and the injecting jet velocity. Additionally, the oscillation angle was found to be a function of Reynolds number due to the interaction of the oscillating jet with the walls of the models used in the present study. Finally, the oscillation frequency was found to be independent of Reynolds number, throat aspect ratio, working gas, and model scale, which resulted in a Strouhal number of 0.017. This result was supported by nondimensionalizing the published data from several other studies.
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