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Nasa runs first-ever test of new jet engine tech, glenn communications.
Car, truck, train and aircraft manufacturers have made great strides in recent years to reduce fuel consumption, resulting in consumer savings and lower emissions. With NASA’s help, the aircraft industry is striving to increase fuel efficiency even more.
One way to do that is to create new aircraft engine designs. Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland are testing a new fan and inlet design, commonly called a propulsor, which could increase fuel efficiency by four to eight percent more than the advanced engine designs airlines are beginning to use.
On today’s jet aircraft, the engines are typically located away from the aircraft’s body to avoid ingesting the layer of slower flowing air that develops along the aircraft’s surfaces, called boundary layer. Aerospace engineers believe they can reduce fuel burn by embedding an aircraft’s engines into these surfaces and ingesting the boundary layer air flow to propel the aircraft through its mission.
It sounds like a simple design change, but it’s actually quite challenging. Boundary layer air flow is highly distorted, and that distortion affects the way the fan performs and operates. These new designs require a stronger fan.
To address these challenges, NASA Glenn is testing a new propulsor in its 8’ x 6’ Wind Tunnel. Designed by United Technologies Research Center with research conducted by Virginia Polytechnic and State University, the rugged boundary layer ingesting (BLI) inlet-fan combination is the first of its kind ever to be tested.
“Studies backed by more detailed analyses have shown that boundary layer ingesting propulsors have the potential to significantly improve aircraft fuel efficiency,” said David Arend, a BLI propulsion expert at NASA Glenn. “If this new design and its enabling technologies can be made to work, the BLI propulsor will produce the required thrust with less propulsive power input. Additional aircraft drag and weight reduction benefits have also been identified.”
The highly experimental tests required years of preparation. Many industry, NASA and academic experts contributed to the design and analysis of the propulsor. NASA Glenn engineers also modified the wind tunnel to accept a larger model, a boundary layer control system and a way to power the experiment.
“We have generated a unique test capability that doesn’t exist anywhere in the country for testing boundary layer ingesting propulsors,” said Jim Heidmann, manager of NASA’s Advanced Air Transport Technologies project.
Throughout testing, the team will change the wind speed and vary the boundary layer thickness and fan operation to see how these changes affect the propulsor’s performance, operability and structure. Results of the tests will be applicable to multiple cutting-edge aircraft designs being pursued by NASA as well as by its academic and private industry partners.
Jan Wittry NASA’s Glenn Research Center
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Related Terms
- Advanced Air Transport Technology
- Advanced Air Vehicles Program
- Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate
- Glenn Research Center
Gas Turbine Propulsion
Thrust and Force
Thrust is the force which moves any aircraft through the air. Thrust is generated by the propulsion system of the aircraft. Different propulsion systems develop thrust in different ways, but all thrust is generated through some application of Newton’s third law of motion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In any propulsion system, a working fluid is accelerated by the system and the reaction to this acceleration produces a force on the system. A general derivation of the thrust equation shows that the amount of thrust generated depends on the mass flow through the engine and the exit velocity of the gas.
Gas Turbine/ Jet Engine
During World War II, a new type of airplane engine was developed independently in Germany and in England. This engine was called a gas turbine engine. We sometimes call this engine a jet engine . Early gas turbine engines worked much like a rocket engine creating a hot exhaust gas which was passed through a nozzle to produce thrust. But unlike the rocket engine which must carry its oxygen for combustion , the turbine engine gets its oxygen from the surrounding air. A turbine engine does not work in outer space because there is no surrounding air. For a gas turbine engine, the accelerated gas, or working fluid , is the jet exhaust. Most of the mass of the jet exhaust comes from the surrounding atmosphere. Most modern, high-speed passenger and military aircraft are powered by gas turbine engines. Because gas turbine engines are so important for modern life, we will be providing a lot of information about turbine engines and their operation.
Gas Turbine Engine
Turbine engines come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes because of the many different aircraft missions. All gas turbine engines have some parts in common, however. On the slide we see pictures of four different aircraft equipped with gas turbine engines. Each aircraft has a unique mission and therefore a unique propulsion requirement. At the upper left is a DC-8 airliner. Its mission is to carry large loads of passengers or cargo for a long distance at high speed. It spends most of its life in high-speed cruise .
At the lower left is an F-14 fighter plane. Its mission is to shoot down other aircraft in air-to-air combat. It spends most of its life in cruise but needs high acceleration when in combat. At the lower right is a C-130 cargo aircraft. Like the DC-8, it carries cargo a long distance, but it does not have the high-speed requirement of the DC-8.
At the upper right is a T-38 trainer. It is used to teach pilots how to fly jet aircraft and does not have the acceleration requirements of the F-14. The DC-8 is powered by four high-bypass turbofan engines, the F-14 by two afterburning low-bypass turbofans, the C-130 by four turboprop engines, and the T-38 by two turbojet engines.
Turbine Engine Propulsion
Jet Engine Interactive Simulator is an interactive JavaScript application which allows you to study different types of jet engines. You can learn the fundamentals of turbine engine propulsion with the EngineSim simulator. RangeGames is an interactive JavaScript application which allows you to study how different types of aircraft use different types of engines to meet their mission.
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