Strict emission norms in the last few decades have paved the path for adaptation of new low No X emission alternatives to power generation and aircraft propulsion. Lean combustion is a very promising and practicable technology for reducing NO X reduction and also have very high fuel efficiency. However, lean combustion technology suffers from inherent combustion instabilities that are manifested under different conditions, most importantly, thermoacoustic instability and lean blowout. Lean blowout occurs when a gas turbine combustor operating close to lean limit, for lowest No X emission, faces abrupt changes in fuel homogeneity, quality or flow rate. While many work have been done in thermo-acoustic instability and flame propagation in annular combustors, studies in lean blowout in annular combustors are very limited. The lean limit of combustors are not fixed and is dependent on fuel characteristics and operating condition including environmental effects. So accurate online prediction of lean limit is very important to keep the combustors operating safely near lean limit. Recent works have demonstrated that single burner combustors leave out a significant amounts of physics including interaction of flames from different burners prior to blowout. In this work, a stepped down swirl and bluff body stabilized annular combustor in CB configuration (having chamber and burner), is used as experimental test rig having 4 number of identical burners. Video and heat release data are taken at different conditions as lean blowout is approached. Frequent attachment and reattachment of the flames prior to lift off was seen. As lean blowout is approached, inherent subtle differences in the different burners get amplified when flame becomes sufficiently weak and flame symmetry is broken. As air fuel mixture is made gradually leaner, one by one the flames from different burners elongates although remains partially attached to burner. Further lowering the equivalence ratio results in lift off and merging of the flame fronts of different burners. Three pixel averaged color ratios are extracted from still camera RGB images as flame stability indicators which are, red by blue, red by green and blue by green. The parameters show marked change at the point of lift off as well as at the lean blowout point.

Increasingly stringent emission norms place tougher challenges on the efficiencies of a turbocharger. Higher efficiency requirement on turbocharger translates into tighter tolerances on the various geometrical dimensions. While this is applicable for all the components, in this study, the focus is on the compressor wheel. Compressor wheels are either cast or milled and variations are possible in either of the processes. Even small changes in the dimensions of compressor wheel (like diameter, angle distribution, thickness distribution, axial length and blade width etc.), cause the performance losses in Turbo charger. Loss in Performance of turbocharger affects Low-end torque, power rating, fuel economy as well as increasing compressor exit temperature. It is therefore important to understand and quantify the impact of the variation in blade geometry on pressure ratio, choke flow and efficiency. In this paper, a few case studies of manufacturing variations in blade thickness, blade height and axial length are shown based on gas stand tests as well as 3D CFD simulations. A process for extracting real geometry from white light scan data obtained from the manufactured wheel is shown which helps to compare the differences with the design intent geometry. Flow simulations with the real geometry show the impact on performance. Subsequently a systematic analysis of the variations is carried out to quantify the performance impact.

In many combustion systems, fuel atomization and the spray breakup process play an important role in determining combustion characteristics and emission formation. Due to the ever-rising need for better fuel efficiency and lower emissions, the development of a fundamental understanding of its process is essential and remains a challenging task. The Spray-A case of the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) is considered in the study, in which liquid n-Dodecane (Spray-A) is injected at 1500 bar through a nozzle diameter of 90 μm into a constant volume vessel with an ambient density of 22.8 kg / m 3 and an ambient temperature of 900 K. The unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) in conjunction with k-ε turbulence model is used to investigate the flow physics in a two-dimensional axisymmetric computational domain. A reduced chemical mechanism from Wang et al. [1] with 100 species and 432 reactions is invoked to represent the kinetics. The gas and liquid phases are modeled using Eulerian-Lagrangian coupled approach. The present model is validated with the experimental data as well as computational data of Pei et al. [2]. Initially, the effects of various turbulence models with modified constants are examined without introducing the breakup phenomena in the computational physics. Later on, primary and secondary breakup processes of the liquid fuel are taken into account. In the present study, we examine the effects of secondary breakup modeling on the spray under high-pressure conditions using different breakup models, including Wave, Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor (KH-RT) and Stochastic Secondary Droplet (SSD) models. It has been observed that KH-RT model is more dominant in such high-pressure sprays and predict physics more accurately as compared to other models. The dominance of convection as well as diffusion controlled vaporization model is also realized over the diffusion controlled vaporization model. The investigations at different fuel injection pressures are also modeled and validated with the experimental data [3]. The results strongly suggest that applying high-pressure, leads to high injection velocity and momentum which enhances the air entrainment near the injector region and the mixing process.

Incessant demand for fossil derived energy and the resulting environmental impact has urged the renewable energy sector to conceive one of the most anticipated sustainable, alternative “drop-in” fuels for jet engines, called as, Bio-Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (Bio-SPKs). Second (Camelina SPK & Jatropha SPK and third generation (Microalgae SPK) advanced biofuels have been chosen to analyse their influence on the behaviour of a jet engine through numerical modelling and simulation procedures. The thermodynamic influence of each of the biofuels on the gas turbine performance extended to aircraft performance over a user-defined trajectory (with chosen engine/airframe configuration) have been reported in this paper. Initially, the behaviour of twin-shaft turbofan engine operated with 100% Bio-SPKs at varying operating conditions. This evaluation is conducted from the underpinning phase of adopting the chemical composition of Bio-SPKs towards an elaborate and careful prediction of fluid thermodynamics properties (FTPs). The engine performance was primarily estimated in terms of fuel consumption which steers the fiscal and environmental scenarios in civil aviation. Alternative fuel combustion was virtually simulated through stirred-reactor approach using a validated combustor model. The system-level emissions (CO 2 and NOx) have been numerically quantified and reported as follows: the modelled aircraft operating with Bio-SPKs exhibited fuel economy (mission fuel burn) by an avg. of 2.4% relative to that of baseline (Jet Kerosene). LTO-NOx for the user-defined trajectory decreased by 7–7.8% and by 15–18% considering the entire mission. Additionally, this study reasonably qualitatively explores the benefits and issues associated with Bio-SPKs.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil crisis of the mid 1970s led to a revival in interest in the propeller as a possible fuel-efficient propulsion for aircraft operating at subsonic cruise speeds. A propeller aerodynamics is complex and should be analyzed carefully to ensure maximum propellers efficiency. Detailed knowledge of flow patterns and aerodynamics loads is necessary for blade material and manufacturing process. In this study, an isolated propeller blade is chosen as the base of analysis, the geometry of the propeller: twist and chord variation with radius, are taken from real case module. The boundary conditions of the computational domain are set corresponding to that exist in the propeller manuals. A three dimensional unstructured grid was generated and adopted using commercial grid generator GAMBIT software. The governing equations are solved using FLUENT6.3.26 a commercial CFD code, which uses a control volume approach on a grid over the computational domain. Results identified that the propeller efficiency, power coefficient are increases to reach maximum values and then decreases with increase Mach number. The thrust coefficient decreases with increase Mach number.