In the highly competitive aerospace industry, engine manufacturers must react very quickly and precisely to any demand emerging from aircraft manufacturers if they want to be positioned on the offer. This is especially true when answering to Requests For Information (RFI) based on preliminary design investigations of first level. In order to reduce the time needed to perform these costly operations while improving the performances achieved, Snecma wishes to develop tools for dimensioning the engine and also for assessing key parameters such as mass, emissions, fuel burn, costs, etc. Unfortunately, the set of tools and the process used at the present time for preliminary design investigations of first level are not sufficient to meet the high standards sought-after by the company in terms of time and performances. As a consequence, efforts must be spent on redefining the whole process and the tools it is based on; here is the mission that has been conferred upon me.   Multiple exchanges with performances engineers and specialists allowed to draw the current process for preliminary design investigations of first level and raise all the associated concerns. At the same time, a status of the existing tools (called modules in this report), mainly developed under Excel, has been realised in order to identify the range of action for today's investigations. A prototype has been developed under SDK Python with the aim of proving the feasibility of a solution to a difficulty that shows up in the process for each new investigation: the one of generating the workflow on the optimisation software Optimus. A target process has finally been discussed considering all the information collected, and would allow dividing by five the time needed to perform investigations compare to now. The prototype developed lead to interesting results and this solution could thus probably be integrated in the target process as it would allow saving one day of work for an engineer for each study to be carried out.   Solutions have been proposed to all the concerns identified in the process and they will have to be discussed with many actors and investigated further in the near future in order to set the target process that will allow meeting the final objective of answering all types of RFIs emitted by aircraft manufacturer in a very short time with a high level of confidence in the results.

This thesis describes the work undertaken by the author in collaboration with Wyman-Gordon Forgings, USA, to assist in the development of a cooling system,based on air assisted atomised water sprays primarily for the quenching of aerospace components from high temperatures. The mechanical properties of forgings used in aircraft engines depend on the rate of cooling from the heat treatment solution temperature. It is well known that water quenching produces high cooling rate. Although, the severity of the quench can sometimes produce unacceptable distortion and high residual stresses in the component. For this reason water quenching is only used when a high cooling rate is definitely needed and it is often replaced by a less severe oil quench. However, over the last 10 years the trend to reduce manufacturing costs has led to the forging of parts that are closer to the net shape. In these cases even oil quenching can lead to residual stresses being developed that result in difficulties during the final machining of the engine component. Forced air cooling has been adopted in problem cases where the part is thin enough to attain the desired cooling rate. In many instances, however, the component is of intermediate size or varying in cross section and fan cooling cannot provide the cooling rate which is needed to obtain the desired mechanical properties, whilst oil quenching produces an unacceptable level of residual stresses. The use of air assisted atomised water sprays can provide heat transfer coefficients whose values lie between those for air cooling and oil quenching. Another advantage is that control of the air pressure enables the spray nozzle to operate with a much wider range of water flow rates so that the cooling rate can be readily controlled over the range. This study describes the investigation of the heat transfer characteristics of air assisted atomised water sprays to quench aeroengine components from temperatures of approximately 850°C. New data were obtained at high temperatures for air assisted atomised water sprays operating over a wide range of water mass fluxes, (8.01>w 0 >0kg/m2 .s). In practice the geometry of a component can be complex in shape. Therefore an investigation was also carried out into the application of spray cooling on recessed surfaces. It was found that the surface recess contributes significantly to the reduction in the rate of heat transfer at low and high water mass fluxes, but had little effect at intermediate flow rates. Pulsed sprays were investigated and proposed as a means of controlling heat transfer coefficients for both plane and recessed surfaces. The use of a pulsed spray makes it possible to control the amount of water impacting on a surface per second. It was found that "water off periods of 5 and 10 seconds resulted in a reduction in heat transfer coefficients at low temperatures and also reduced considerably the differences in cooling previously observed between plane and recessed surfaces. A finite element code was used to predict the residual stresses produced in a forged component for a range of spray parameters, and spray arrangements. The data were compared with cooling rates and stress patterns produced by both air and oil quenching. It was found that spray cooling resulted in cooling rates which met the mechanical property specification and provided residual stresses lower than those obtained during oil quenching. Furthermore, simulations of residual stress formation using two different spray arrangements in a typical forging indicated that spray non uniformities can substantially disturb the resultant residual stress patterns which could result in less predictable distortions during final machining. The study of spray cooling presented here suggests that the use of air assisted atomised water sprays has considerable potential and could provide the required cooling rate for individual forgings.

La conception de nouveaux moteurs impose de respecter des normes de sécurité concernant les performances d'allumage et de ré-allumage en conditions critiques. Des campagnes d'essais étant onéreuses, les industriels cherchent donc à disposer d'outils numériques fiables. Afin d'améliorer la simulation des écoulements, le caractère multicomposant du carburant doit être pris en compte. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier l'influence de l'évaporation d'un brouillard de gouttes sur un écoulement réactif. Pour cela, une étude de la propagation d'une flamme laminaire 1D est réalisée à l'aide d'un code de calcul multiphysique (CEDRE). Un train continu de gouttes monodisperse est injecté, les gouttes étant mono ou bicomposant. L'influence de la dynamique d'évaporation sur la combustion est étudiée. Deux cinétiques chimiques réduites multicomposant sont comparées. La composition, le diamètre et la richesse initiale des gouttes ont un impact sur la structure de flamme, la vitesse de flamme et la composition des gaz brûlés. Ensuite, l'effet de l'évaporation est étudié en phase d'allumage pour un brouillard de gouttes polydisperses monocomposant avec un modèle de noyau d'allumage local. L’écoulement instationnaire non-réactif dans un secteur de chambre industriel (MERCATO) est calculé avec une approche LES. Le caractère instationnaire, voire périodique, de la phase dispersée est mis en évidence en certains points de l'écoulement. Les résultats, associés au modèle d'allumage et à des critères, sont utilisées pour réaliser une carte de probabilité d'allumage. Des essais de calcul d'allumage complet de la chambre sont réalisés. Les résultats indiquent une surestimation des termes sources liés à l'évaporation de la phase dispersée et à la combustion. / The design of new aircraft engines needs in particular to comply with safety standards for the performance of stabilized combustion and ignition or re-ignition under critical conditions. Experimental campaigns are expensive, so numerical tools are needed. To improve the accuracy of the models used to simulate flow, the multicomponent nature of the fuel must be taken into account, whether it is kerosene or alternative fuel. The objective of this thesis is to study the influence of a droplet mist vaporization on a reactive flow. For this, an academic study of the propagation of a 1D laminar flame is performed using a CFD code {CEDRE). A continuous stream of monodisperse droplets is injected, the droplets being mono or bicomponent. The influence of the dynamics of evaporation on combustion is particularly studied. Two reduced multicomponent chemical kinetics are compared. The composition, the diameter and the initial equivalent ratio of droplets have an impact on the structure of the flame, the flame speed and composition of the burnt gases. A local ignition kernel model is applied to study the influence ofvaporization on ignition in the case of monocomponent, polydisperse droplets. Experimental data are available for a monosector combustion chamber (MERCATO) so the non-reactive unsteady flow is simulated with a LES approach. The unsteady, sometimes periodic, nature of the dispersed phase is highlighted in some points of the flow. A ignition model is applied to instantaneous flow fields and criteria are analysed to realise an ignition probability map which validates the approach. Finally, ignition of a combustion chamber is tested. The results point out an overestimation of source terms related to the evaporation of the dispersed phase and combustion.

Thesis (M.S.)--Air Force Institute of Technology, 2003. / Title from title screen (viewed July 1, 2004). "March 2003." Vita. "AFIT/GOR/ENS/03-06." "ADA412960"--URL. Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-90). Also issued in paper format.