DISTRIBUTED PROPULSION and TURBOFAN SCALE EFFECTS Anders Lundbladh Volvo Aero Corporation S-46181 Trollhättan, Sweden [email protected]
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Chalmers Publication Library 1 ISABE-2005-1122 DISTRIBUTED PROPULSION AND TURBOFAN SCALE EFFECTS Anders Lundbladh Volvo Aero Corporation S-46181 Trollhättan, Sweden [email protected] Tomas Grönstedt Chalmers University Sweden ABSTRACT ps Propulsion System, i.e. exclusive of airframe drag effect on intake pressure recovery A coupled aircraft and engine model is used to evaluate the fuel consumption and mission weight of distributed propulsion aircraft. The engine cycle is INTRODUCTION optimized for the installation to show the ultimate performance of each propulsion alternative. The A conventional subsonic transport aircraft is effect of higher specific fuel consumption for smaller equipped with two to four turbofan engines. The engines is weighed against the potentially lower trend from the fifties until now has favored the twin installation weight and higher integration efficiency underwing engine configuration. An alternative is to of distributed propulsion. use a large number of engines. This concept can broadly be described as distributed propulsion. Nomenclature More than four engines have been used in the past for reasons of reliability and unavailability of V Velocity relative to the aircraft sufficiently large engines (compare e.g. the “Spruce T Total propulsive thrust Goose” and the B-52). Reliability concerns also led P Propulsive power to the requirement that an ocean crossing aircraft D Drag must have at least three engines, although the number FHV Fuel Heating Value of routes affected by this has decreased due to W Mass flow ETOPS qualification of twin engine aircraft. W* Normalized Mass Flow However, in the future the possible advantage of TOW Take off weight using more than four engines on an aircraft relies on PSW Propulsion System Weight incl. nacelle weak “scale effects” simultaneously affecting many OPR Overall Pressure Ratio parameters. Lowered structural load by distributing FPR Fan Pressure Ratio propulsion units is one such engine scale effect used BPR ByPass Ratio to some advantage on e.g. the Helios solar powered SFC Specific Fuel Consumption aircraft. Positive scale effects for distributed Re Reynolds number propulsion may also include lower engine installation η Efficiency drag, the potential to increase propulsive efficiency, decreased noise, lower aircraft and engine structure Subscripts weight, better material properties of small components, increased aircraft configurational 0 Free stream freedom and mass production cost advantages. A j Jet smaller engine may also find a wider application for t Turbine transport aircraft of various sizes as well as business c Compressor jets and UAVs, which would increase production pol Polytropic efficiency and spread development cost. i Immediately upstream of intake There are, however, also definite disadvantages in Component inlet from using engines of smaller size, the main ones out Component outlet being increased pressure and heat losses due to a p Propulsive decreased Reynolds number and leakages, as well as th Thermal increased maintenance cost. It can be noted that it is F Fuel primarily this negative impact on efficiency and cost ing Ingested part which has driven configurations to the ubiquitous 2 twin engine transport aircraft, and which has give a satisfactory correlation. The constants C increased the market share for single engine military c fighters compared to twins. and Ct were chosen to set the efficiency to the level The presented technology study attempts to of state of the art turbomachinery. identify relevant engine scale effects for turbofan It is clear that losses other than turbulent skin propulsion and to quantify their size. The scale friction contribute in turbomachinery components, effects are applied in a coupled engine cycle, but most of them are related to viscous effects either component efficiency and weight estimation model. directly or indirectly through the design process. The application effect is then evaluated in a simple Newer designs have also succeeded in reducing aircraft weight and mission performance estimation secondary flow losses. The fit of the above relations for a conventional and a flying wing/Blended Wing with data also means that other effects are taken into Body (BWB) configuration. account at least approximately. Fan flow is dominated by transonic and shock PROPULSION MODELING losses and available data did not suggest a strong correlation with size. Combustor flow losses are Turbofan scale effects modeling designed in for combustion stability and do not vary with engine size. Other flow losses are small and Today’s large aircraft engines show an their dependence on size should be largely unprecedented level of efficiency caused by refined insignificant. Weight models (described below) based aerodynamics, materials and cooling which allow on cycle data correlate well without scale corrections. extreme cycle temperatures. This in turn has allowed Wing beam weight may vary with number of a high pressure ratio which is the chief parameter engines but gains using smaller engines should be behind high thermal efficiency. The size of these small for a typical jet transport where the wing is engines helps keeping flow losses small. Smaller gauged to carry the larger weights of the fuselage and engines are less fuel efficient for a number of fuel, and these gains may be offset by requirements reasons. When comparing engines of different size for local strengthening at many points. for one application, limitations of physics and In summary, for the relatively large engines the technology must be kept apart from the difference in primary scale effects are found to be compressor and current applications and previous limited availability turbine efficiencies. Inclusion of other, weaker scale of development resources for small engines, scarcity effect can refine the results given here, but will most of new designs for smaller engines etc. likely not change the main trends. In this study we have chosen to concentrate on the efficiency variation of the turbomachinery with Installation efficiency modeling size. Compressor efficiency has been correlated to a Several critical issues in assessing the Reynolds number of the high pressure compressor performance of the distributed propulsion concept exit. Expecting a power law to give a good fit it was relate to the engine installation efficiency [1,2]. found that the compressor efficiencies of state of the Embedding the engine in the wing or fuselage may, art compressors can be found as: depending on engine size and aircraft design, − 0 .4 completely or at least to a large extent eliminate η c , pol = 1 − C c Re c ,out nacelle drag. Another opportunity related to * 1.7 distributed propulsion is its potential to efficiently Rec,out = Wc Pc,out /Tc,out ingest large parts of the aircraft wakes, thereby Note that this is a stronger relationship than the increasing the propulsive efficiency. Quantitative −0.2 Re expected from turbulent skin friction only. models for assessing the impact on the aircraft The Reynolds number definition is consistent with a system performance of both engine embedding and blade velocity independent of compressor size and wake ingestion are developed below. that the hub tip ratio and blade aspect ratio does not have a significant trend with size. Wake ingestion modeling For the turbines limited data suggests that: The common definitions of propulsive and −0.2 thermal efficiency are the quotients ηt, pol =1− Ct Ret,in V0T * 1.7 η p = Ret,in = Wt Pt,in /Tt,in Pj − P0 3 The definitions above collapses to the standard Pj − P0 ηth = expression when there is no airframe effect on the WF FHV pressure recovery. Note that the above propulsive efficiency as well That is the propulsion efficiency is the quotient as the one used by Smith, can be increased beyond of “useful” propulsive power divided by the increase one in some cases and thus as he suggested should in gas flow kinetic power provided by the engine. properly be termed the “propulsive coefficient”. For the definitions to be meaningful the The procedure for calculating the engine cycle is velocities of the inflow and jet must be measured then simply to calculate the total pressure at the air where the static pressure is the same, i.e. upstream of intake, and then to calculate the engine cycle with the aircraft and downstream of the engine. Since in this lower intake pressure and he corresponding practice the kinetic energy decreases downstream due equivalent intake velocity. In fact it can be performed to viscous effects, an ideal non-viscous velocity must by finding the equivalent flight velocity of the be used to find P . It is easily verified that this propulsion system. It has to be kept in mind, j however, that while the total pressure is decreased, propulsive efficiency is less than or equal to one. the total temperature stays constant, if there is no heat By this definition intake losses will cause Pj to exchanged with the airframe. decrease and the thermal efficiency of the power When estimating the equivalent velocity plant will decrease. However, if the intake is located decrease, the concept of Ding/T introduced by Smith is useful. D is the momentum deficit in the air downstream of a part of the aircraft not belonging to ing the power plant, this means that the drag of this part ingested by the propulsion system corresponding to is then included in the thermal efficiency as a loss of part of the viscous drag of the vehicle. From momentum balance it follows: intake pressure, and should then not be included in the drag. This division is also consistent with the V0 −Vi = T (Ding T ) Wi . standard drag accounting procedure [3,4]. It is Because the wake momentum loss is distributed somewhat counterintuitive that a downstream power over a considerable airflow, the attainable Ding/T is plant affects the drag of an upstream surface, even if limited by a function of the engine airflow and the the pressure and flow field around the latter is shape factor of the wake as shown by Smith.