Air Force Research Laboratory and Innovative Scientific Solutions Inc.

Fuel-Cooled for Engine

Innovative Scientific Solutions Incorpo- rated (ISSI) works with the Air Force Re- search Laboratory (AFRL) to develop technical solutions for the United States Air Force. AFRL and ISSI assigned the team to design, build, and test a gaso- line-cooled intercooler for a turbocharged Rotax 914 engine used on small aircraft. An intercooler is a heat exchanger used to cool intake air after compression in a . Cooling the compressed air improves the power and efficiency of the engine. The design of the intercooler was governed by geometric and pressure drop constraints.

After considering several designs, an off- set fin array was found to maximize tem- perature drop for a given pressure drop. The temperature and pres- The final intercooler prototype was designed, manufactured, and tested to validate the pre- sure drops were found experimentally for two designs using this fin dicted performance characteristics. array. From experimental data it was confirmed that pressure drop increases with increasing temperature drop. An upper limit for the maximum te m perature drop was found for the given constraints.

Intercoolers on the current market (air -to-air and air-to-water) are ef- fective in removing heat. However, for small aircraft applications they increase weight and drag. By using the onboard as a cooling fluid, this intercooler is able to effectively cool the intake air without increasing weight or drag. The project benefits ISSI and AFRL by ex- ploring the achievable performance characteristics given the design constraints. It was identified for the sponsor what designs will work best and what complications arise in manufacture, design, and vali- dation of the product.

2012–13 14: FlyCool

Dr. Jerry Bowman Matthew Searle, Tyler Christiansen, Trevor Mecham, Matt Harris, Josh Sakamaki, Ryan Downer

Exploded CAD model of final design.

Capstone Team FlyCool