A Formulation of Multidimensional Growth Models for the Assessment and Forecast of Technology Attributes Travis W. Danner 229 Pages Directed by Dr. Dimitri Mavris This research proposes the formulation of multidimensional growth models as an approach to simulating the advancement of multi-objective technologies towards their upper limits. These multidimensional growth models are formulated by noticing and exploiting the correlation between technology growth models and technology frontiers. Both are frontiers in actuality. The technology growth curve is a frontier between capability levels of a single attribute and time, while a technology frontier is a frontier between the capability levels of two or more attributes. Multidimensional growth models are formulated by exploiting the mathematical significance of this correlation. The result is a model that can capture both the interaction between multiple system attributes and their expected rates of improvement over time. The fundamental nature of technology development is maintained and interdependent growth curves are generated for each system metric with minimal data requirements. Being founded on the basic nature of technology advancement, relative to physical limits, the availability for further improvement can be determined for a single metric relative to other system measures of merit. A byproduct of this modeling approach is a single n-dimensional technology frontier linking all n system attributes with time. This provides an environment capable of forecasting future system capability in the form of advancing technology frontiers. In addition to formulating the multidimensional growth model, this research provides a systematic procedure for applying it to specific technology architectures. Researchers and decision-makers are able to investigate the potential for additional improvement within that technology architecture and estimate the expected cost of each incremental improvement relative to the cost of past improvements. In this manner, multidimensional growth models provide the necessary information to set reasonable program goals for the further development of a particular technological approach or to establish the need for new technological approaches in light of the constraining limits of conventional approaches.

This thesis addresses the need for an optimization method which can simultaneously optimize and balance an aerothermodynamic cycle. The method developed is be able to control cycle design variables at all operating conditions to meet the performance requirements while controlling any additional variables which may be used to optimize the cycle and maintaining all operating limits and engine constraints. The additional variables represent degrees of freedom above what is needed for conservation of mass and energy in the engine system. The motivation for such a method is derived from variable cycle engines, however it is general enough to use with most engine architectures. The method is similar to many optimization algorithms but differs in its implementation to an aircraft engine by combining the cycle balance and optimization using a Newton-Raphson cycle solver to efficiently find cycle designs for a wide range of engine architectures with extra degrees of freedom not needed to balance the cycle. Combination of the optimization with the cycle solver greatly speeds up the design and optimization process. A detailed process description for implementation of the method is provided as well as a proof of concept using several analytical test functions. Finally, the method is demonstrated on a separate flow turbofan model. Limitations and applications of the method are further explored including application to a multi-design point methodology.

Le besoin permanent de réduire le bruit des moteurs d’avion constitue un véritable engouement pour le développement de nouveaux traitements acoustiques. Les traitements traditionnels de type résonateur continuent d’être utilisé et permettent d’atténuer le son sur une bande de fréquence restreinte malgré l’augmentation du nombre de degré de liberté. Une alternative possible est l’utilisation de matériaux poreux, dit à réaction non localisée, qui permettent d’élargir le spectre d’atténuation. Ce rapport est consacré à la modélisation d’un traitement acoustique basé sur des matériaux poreux dans les conditions d’une manche d’entrée d’air de turboréacteur. Un modèle semi-analytique a donc été développé pour le calcul de la perte par transmission d’un conduit cylindrique traité en paroi et soumis à un écoulement uniforme. Une étude paramétrique a ensuite été réalisée afin de cibler les caractéristiques du traitement optimal pour une configuration aéronautique donnée. Des résultats expérimentaux sur une veine à échelle réduite sont également montrés et témoignent d’un certain accord avec le calcul. Enfin, dans le but d’approfondir les connaissances théoriques sur le problème, une étude préliminaire sur les effets d’une couche limite est réalisée et montre que sa prise en compte parait indispensable pour bien choisir les traitements acoustiques, surtout à haute fréquence. / The constant need to reduce noise emissions from aircraft engine leads to a real demand for developing new acoustic treatments. Conventional liners based on resonatorlike structure continue to be used and provide narrow-band attenuation in spite of an increasing degree of freedom. A possible alternative is the use of porous materials (nonlocally reacting), which offer the possibility of broadening the attenuation spectrum. This report deals with the modelling of an acoustic treatment based on porous materials for aeroengine nacelle inlet. A semi-analytical model is developed for predicting the transmission loss of a treated cylindrical duct containing uniform mean flow. Then, a parametrical study is carried out in order to target the optimal liner characteristics for a given turbofan duct application. Also, experiments have been performed on a small-scale duct and have shown agreement with the simulation. Finally, for a better theoretical unv derstanding of the problem, a preliminary study on the effect of a boundary layer is conducted and shows that its consideration seems to be essential for optimal choice of acoustic lining, espacially at high frequencies.

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An array of small, lightweight acoustic sources was investigated to determine how such an arrangement of sources would acoustically interact with a duct similar to that of a turbofan engine inlet. The sources were cylindrically curved aluminum panels excited in vibration by the application of a sinusoidally varying voltage to a piezoceramic actuator bonded to them. The finite element method was used as a design tool to size the panel based on desired vibration characteristics. A boundary element acoustic analysis was used to predict the acoustic output from various arrangements of sources. The central portion of the research was a series of experiments using an array of twelve sources arranged circumferentially in a duct. Measurements of the performance of each source revealed that the performance of the acoustic sources varied from source to source. This variation was assumed to have been caused by differences in the quality of the bond of each of the piezoceramic actuators to the panels. Directivity measurements were made in the far field. Measurements were also taken of the pressure field established in the duct cross-section. Modal decomposition was applied to the data. It was found that the dominant acoustic modes in the duct are those whose cut-on frequencies were near the frequency of excitation. / Master of Science

An innovative application of existing technology is proposed for attenuating the effects of transient phenomena, such as rotor-stator and rotor-strut interactions, linked to noise and fatigue failure in turbomachinery environments. A computational study was designed to assess the potential of Passive Porosity Technology as a mechanism for alleviating interaction effects and radiated noise by reducing the fluctuating forces acting on the vane surfaces. The study involved a typical high bypass fan stator airfoil immersed in a subsonic free field and exposed to the effects of a transversely moving wake. Time histories of the primitive aerodynamic variables obtained from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) calculations were input into an acoustic prediction code to estimate noise levels at a radial distance of ten chords from the stator airfoil. This procedure was performed on the solid airfoil to obtain a baseline, and on approximately fifty porous configurations in order to isolate those that would yield maximum noise reductions without compromising the aerodynamic performance of the stator. It was found that, for a single stator immersed in a subsonic flow field, communication between regions of high pressure differential - made possible by the use of passive porosity - tends to induce a time-dependent oscillatory pattern of small inflow-outflow regions near the stator leading edge (LE), which is well established before wake effects come into play. The oscillatory pattern starts at the LE, and travels downstream on both suction and pressure sides of the airfoil. The amplitude of the oscillations seemed to be proportional to the extension of the porous patch on the pressure side. Regardless of this effect, which may not have occurred if the airfoil were placed within a stator cascade, communication between regions of high pressure differential is necessary to significantly alter the noise radiation pattern of the stator airfoil. Whether those changes result in noise abatement or enhancement depends primarily on the placement and extension of the porous patches. For most viable configurations, porosity reduced loading noise but increased thickness noise. Variations in nominal porosity were of secondary importance. In general, the best aerodynamic performers (i.e., those configurations that were able to reduce unsteady lift without severely altering the lift and/or drag characteristics of the solid airfoil) were also the best acoustic performers. As a result of using passive surface porosity, overall peak radiated noise was reduced by approximately 1.0 dB. This reduction increased to about 2.5 dB when the effects of loading noise alone were considered. / Ph. D.

Gas turbine performance models are usually created in an object oriented manner, where different standard components are connected to form the complete model. The characteristics of these components are often represented by component maps and empirical correlations. However, engine specific component characteristics are seldom available to anyone outside of the manufacturers. It is therefore very common for researchers to use publicly accessible or generic component maps instead. But in order to reduce prediction errors the maps have to be modified to fit any specific engine. This thesis work investigates the process of adapting a parametric turbofan engine model to a limited amount of test-data using the propulsion program EVA. Steady state test-data was generated using an initial reference model with SLS operating conditions. Another engine model with different fan, compressor and turbine maps was then used in the adaptation. An initial on-design model was adapted to the highest power test-data point. This model is based on aerothermodynamic equations and is used as a reference to scale the generic component maps to. A sensitivity analysis was done at this point in order to find dependencies between unknown component parameters and test data. These were then included in the cycle solver which employs a version of the Newton-Raphson method. After the fan and compressor maps had been scaled to the design point they were adapted to test-data by adjusting the mass flow parameters in a direct search optimizer. Finally, speed lines in the fan and compressor maps were relabeled to reduce rotor speed errors. The adapted performance model was then validated against the reference model at a few flying conditions. The performance model results demonstrate that it is possible to greatly reduce prediction errors by only adjusting the corrected mass flow in fan and compressor maps. Additionally, rotor speed errors could successfully be corrected as a final step in the adaptation by relabeling speed lines in the component maps. When validated, the adapted model had a maximum parameter error of 1.5%.

A series of experiments was conducted to evaluate the aerodynamic and acoustic performance of a supersonic inlet with a modified auxiliary door geometry. A 1/14 scale model of an axisymmetric, mixed-compression, supersonic inlet designed for civil transportation was used in conjunction with a 10.4cm (4.1 in.) turbofan engine simulator to test a new inlet door geometry designed to reduce flow distortion and noise radiation. The new door geometry uses door passages with increased circumferential span to improve the distribution of the flow entering through the doors. In addition, the new design employs sonic flow velocity at the inlet throat and a converging flow passage in the auxiliary doors to attenuate propagating fan noise through the choking effect. To provide a basis for comparison, a baseline door geometry representative of current designs was also tested. The experiments were conducted at simulated aircraft takeoff engine speeds under static conditions. Steady-state measurements of the inlet flow field were made along with far field acoustic measurements of the fan noise. The results show the new door geometry is successful in reducing circumferential flow distortion at the fan entrance by a factor of 2.3 compared to the baseline configuration. In addition, far field radiation of the blade passing frequency tone and overall noise is reduced by an average of 4dB(SPL) in the forward and aft sectors (0° to 110° from the inlet axis). As a compromise for the distortion and acoustic improvements, the overall inlet total pressure recovery is reduced by approximately 2% with the new auxiliary doors. / Master of Science

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Fan system efficiency for modern aircraft engine design is increasing to the point that bypass duct geometry is becoming a significant contributor and could ultimately become a limiting factor. To investigate this, a number of methods are available to provide qualitative and quantitative analysis of the flow around the loss mechanisms present in the duct. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is a strong candidate among experimental techniques to address this challenge. Its use has been documented in many other locations within the engine and it can provide high spatial resolution data over large fields of view. In this work it is shown that these characteristics allow the PIV user to reduce the spatial sampling error associated with sparsely spaced point measurements in a large measurement region with high order gradients and small spatial scale flow phenomena. A synthetic flow featuring such attributes was generated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and was sampled by a virtual PIV system and a virtual generic point measurement system. The PIV sampling technique estimated the average integrated velocity field about five times more accurately than the point measurement sampling due to the large errors that existed between each point measurement location. Despite its advantages, implementation of PIV can be a significant challenge, especially for internal measurement where optical access is limited. To reduce the time and cost associated with iterating through experiment designs, a software package was developed which incorporates basic optics principles and fundamental PIV relationships, and calculates experimental output parameters of interest such as camera field of view and the amount of scattered light which reaches the camera sensor. The program can be used to judge the likelihood of success of a proposed PIV experiment design by comparing the output parameters with those calculated from benchmark experiments. The primary experiment in this work focused on the Pratt and Whitney Canada JT15D-1 aft support strut wake structure in the bypass duct and was comprised of three parts: a simulated engine environment was created to provide a proof of concept of the PIV experiment design; the PIV experiment was repeated in the full scale engine at four fan speeds ranging from engine idle up to 80% of the maximum corrected fan speed; and, finally, a CFD simulation was performed with simplifying assumptions to provide insight and perspective into the formation of the wake structures observed in the PIV data. Both computational and experimental results illustrate a non-uniform wake structure downstream of the support strut and support the hypothesis that the junction of the strut and the engine core wall is creating a separate wake structure from that created by the strut main body. The PIV data also shows that the wake structure moves in the circumferential direction at higher fan speeds, possibly due to bulk swirl present in the engine or a pressure differential created by the support strut. The experiment highlights the advantages of using PIV, but also illustrates a number of the implementation challenges present, most notably, those associated with consistently providing a sufficient number of seeding particles in the measurement region. Also, the experiment is the first to the author's knowledge to document the use of PIV in a full scale turbofan engine bypass duct. / Master of Science