Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles
High thrust and low specific fuel consumption (SFC) are important for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles. An effective way to decrease the SFC is to increase the bypass ratio (BPR) of the propulsion system. The air-driven fan (or fan-in-wing) has a very high bypass ratio and has proved to...
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MDPI AG
2019-08-01
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| Series: | Energies |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/15/3003 |
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| author | Xin Xiang Guoping Huang Jie Chen Lei Li Weiyu Lu |
| author_facet | Xin Xiang Guoping Huang Jie Chen Lei Li Weiyu Lu |
| author_sort | Xin Xiang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | High thrust and low specific fuel consumption (SFC) are important for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles. An effective way to decrease the SFC is to increase the bypass ratio (BPR) of the propulsion system. The air-driven fan (or fan-in-wing) has a very high bypass ratio and has proved to be successful in VTOL aircrafts. However, the tip turbine that extracts energy for the air-driven fan faces the low-solidity problem and performs inadequately. In this study, we developed a high-reaction method for the aerodynamic design of a tip turbine to solve the low-solidity problem. A typical tip turbine was selected and designed by both conventional and high-reaction methods. Three-dimensional flow fields were numerically simulated through a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The energy extraction rate was proposed to evaluate and display the energy extraction capability of the turbine. The results showed that the high-reaction turbine could solve the low-solidity problem and significantly increase the isentropic efficiency from approximately 80.0% to 85.6% and improve the isentropic work by 71.9% compared with the conventional method (from 10.28 kW/kg to 17.67 kW/kg). |
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| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1996-1073 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-11T22:28:10Z |
| publishDate | 2019-08-01 |
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| series | Energies |
| spelling | doaj.art-2a81ce649fef41a087fdf1c13fd7a7512022-12-22T03:59:34ZengMDPI AGEnergies1996-10732019-08-011215300310.3390/en12153003en12153003Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL VehiclesXin Xiang0Guoping Huang1Jie Chen2Lei Li3Weiyu Lu4College of Energy and Power, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, ChinaCollege of Energy and Power, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, ChinaCollege of Energy and Power, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, ChinaCollege of Energy and Power, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, ChinaCollege of Energy and Power, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, ChinaHigh thrust and low specific fuel consumption (SFC) are important for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles. An effective way to decrease the SFC is to increase the bypass ratio (BPR) of the propulsion system. The air-driven fan (or fan-in-wing) has a very high bypass ratio and has proved to be successful in VTOL aircrafts. However, the tip turbine that extracts energy for the air-driven fan faces the low-solidity problem and performs inadequately. In this study, we developed a high-reaction method for the aerodynamic design of a tip turbine to solve the low-solidity problem. A typical tip turbine was selected and designed by both conventional and high-reaction methods. Three-dimensional flow fields were numerically simulated through a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The energy extraction rate was proposed to evaluate and display the energy extraction capability of the turbine. The results showed that the high-reaction turbine could solve the low-solidity problem and significantly increase the isentropic efficiency from approximately 80.0% to 85.6% and improve the isentropic work by 71.9% compared with the conventional method (from 10.28 kW/kg to 17.67 kW/kg).https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/15/3003tip turbinelow-solidity turbineaerodynamic analysisvertical takeoff and landing vehicles |
| spellingShingle | Xin Xiang Guoping Huang Jie Chen Lei Li Weiyu Lu Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles Energies tip turbine low-solidity turbine aerodynamic analysis vertical takeoff and landing vehicles |
| title | Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles |
| title_full | Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles |
| title_fullStr | Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles |
| title_full_unstemmed | Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles |
| title_short | Numerical Investigations of a Tip Turbine Aerodynamic Design in a Propulsion System for VTOL Vehicles |
| title_sort | numerical investigations of a tip turbine aerodynamic design in a propulsion system for vtol vehicles |
| topic | tip turbine low-solidity turbine aerodynamic analysis vertical takeoff and landing vehicles |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/15/3003 |
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