Thermal Management Systems for Civil Aircraft Engines: Review, Challenges and Exploring the Future

Abstract

This paper examines and analytically reviews the thermal management systems proposed over the past six decades for gas turbine civil aero engines. The objective is to establish the evident system shortcomings and to identify the remaining research questions that need to be addressed to enable this important technology to be adopted by next generation of aero engines with complicated designs. Future gas turbine aero engines will be more efficient, compact and will have more electric parts. As a result, more heat will be generated by the different electrical components and avionics. Consequently, alternative methods should be used to dissipate this extra heat as the current thermal management systems are already working on their limits. For this purpose, different structures and ideas in this field are stated in terms of considering engines architecture, the improved engine efficiency, the reduced emission level and the improved fuel economy. This is followed by a historical coverage of the proposed concepts dating back to 1958. Possible thermal management systems development concepts are then classified into four distinct classes: classic, centralized, revolutionary and cost-effective; and critically reviewed from challenges and implementation considerations points of view. Based on this analysis, the potential solutions for dealing with future challenges are proposed including combination of centralized and revolutionary developments and combination of classic and cost-effective developments. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is also discussed with a complexity-impact correlation analysis.

Power to air transportation via hydrogen

“…So, it is time to think differently about how thermal loads in modern gas turbine engines can be managed. The liquid hydrogen is a very high potential heat sink that could be used in the architecture of thermal management systems for aircraft propulsion [27]. This paper proposes the idea of converting green electricity to hydrogen and supply the fuel need for the next generation of airplanes as shown in Fig.…”

“…Moreover, the carbon offsetting cost, P cos , in different schemes would vary between €0.2/kg and €0.36/kg [37,38]. Therefore, based on Table 3, the minimum and maximum equivalent jet fuel cost, P e f , would be 25.45 €/MWh (no carbon offsetting cost) and 43.86 €/MWh (maximum carbon offsetting cost), respectively, as described in (27). All scenarios in Fig.…”

Thermal Model and Countermeasures for Future Smart Glasses

“…For recognition and interface, techniques have been presented for head gestures [11], face detection [12], eye movements [13], user authentication [14], estimation of respiration rate [15], speech interaction with eye blinking detection [16], context-aware lightning control [17], distance learning [18], and indoor localization [19], drowsiness and fatigue detection to increase road safety [20], countermeasures to phishing attacks [21], gait aid for Parkinson's disease patients [22], contextually-aware learning in physics experiments [23], and guiding for visually impaired users [24]. Some techniques regarding thermals have been presented such as 3D thermal model reconstruction based on image-based modeling using smartphone sensors [25], design of an oven utilizing radiative heat transfer for smart phone panels [26], thermal management systems for civil aircraft engines [27], and thermal properties of glasses [28]. A system for low-power smart glasses has been presented [29].…”

Thermal Performance Evaluation in Gas Turbine Aero Engines Accessory Gearbox

“…There are a few studies in the literature focusing on the thermal management challenges and potential solutions for GTEs. An analytic review on this topic has recently been done by the authors [3], in which the different aspects, current challenges, and potential solutions for the TMS design procedure in new and next generation of GTEs were studied in detail. One of the main challenges in this field is the lack of physics-based models for thermal loads calculation in different TMS components to enable researchers and manufacturers to predict and analyze the thermal loads in each component at different flight phases, based on the geometry, mechanical loads, input and output powers, and other design parameters.…”