Fuel System With Variable Speed Pump to Improve Thermal Management Ability for Aircraft Engines

Abstract

Now, fuel systems on aircrafts/engines are required to rapidly improve thermal management technology. The proposed variable speed pump systems are a unique solution to improve the thermal management of aircrafts/engines without requiring a major change in the conventional interface between a jet engine and a fuel system. Concurrently, the proposed systems have the possibility to improve SFC by about 0.25% during cruise on a small turbofan engine due to reducing inefficient energy consumption. These systems lead to minimize the conventional cooling mechanisms and contribute to the additional improvement of SFC. The purpose of this paper is to show the characteristics of the proposed systems.

Fuel Flowrate Control for Aeroengine and Fuel Thermal Management for Airborne System of Aircraft—An Overview

“…One method of TMS is to increase the efficiency of FMU and to research and development more effective designs [21]. Variable displacement vane pump (VDVP) [22] used in pump-controlled flowrate control system and variable speed pump (VSP) [23] used in motor-based flowrate control system provide a promising approach to reduce the specific fuel consumption (SFC). VDVP is superior to the legacy system in the pollution resistance, fast response, and high thermal efficiency.…”

“…Then, by comparing the flowrate by online calculation with desired flowrate, the output flowrate of fuel pump can track the desired value by regulating the motor speed. Due to the elimination of the throttling loss, the novel FCS is superior to other fuel control schemes in the ability to absorb external heat loads [22,23]. Motor-based FMS, which consists of a motor-based pressure difference compensator and distributed metering valve, is the development tendency of FMS.…”

“…MEE-FMS eliminates the fuel flow bypass loss, and the pump can exactly output the fuel flow required by the engine. The advantages of the proposed integrated electric fuel system are as follows [22,23]:…”

Cooling Ability/Capacity and Exergy Penalty Analysis of Each Heat Sink of Modern Supersonic Aircraft

“…The heat transfer efficiency of SHX η SHX is a design parameter in this part. Assuming that the outside skin is smooth and the boundary flow layer is laminar, the heat transfer coefficient can be estimated by Equation (34) where Re = ρv/µ and Pr = µc p /λ are respectively the Reynolds number and Prandtl number:…”

“…The improvement of HX is one of the effective methods, which cannot only improve the thermal management ability but also reduce the weight of a TMS [32,33]. Similarly, the improvement of fuel pumps is another effective method: a "variable speed pump system" has been proposed by Daisuke and Yukinori [34] which can reduce the energy consumption of the fuel recirculation system. Besides, several advanced heat transfer methods of TMS have also been proposed.…”