Open AccessAerodynamic design optimization of a bellmouth shaped air intake for jet engine testing purposes and its experiment based validation
Author(s) -
Koray Sevinç
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/1909/1/012028
Subject(s) - computational fluid dynamics , aerodynamics , solver , boundary layer , inlet , reynolds averaged navier–stokes equations , design of experiments , range (aeronautics) , jet engine , aerospace engineering , jet (fluid) , flow (mathematics) , mechanical engineering , computer science , simulation , engineering , automotive engineering , mechanics , mathematics , physics , programming language , statistics
Jet engine ground tests are carried out with bellmouth shaped air intakes in order to measure the mass flow rate and the inlet flow quantities while supplying the engine an undisturbed flow. Although there are a variety of design standards and academic guidelines for the design of bellmouths, they can be designed to reach a lower total pressure loss coefficient, a less disturbed radial velocity profiles for the engine and a less thickened boundary layer at the engine inlet. This enhanced design can be achieved with the help of optimization algorithms and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computations thanks to the increasing average computational power and simplicity of the flow problem. In this study, a genetic algorithm based optimization method and a RANS solver under a commercial software platform are applied to find a bellmouth design with less loss and less disturbed flow. An elliptical bellmouth lip profile with a linear extension part is defined with parametrization and a wide range of parameter space is investigated during the design work. Optimum design candidates are presented comparatively regarding the design purpose. The selected design candidate is produced and tested for CFD validation.