3-hole pressure probes are capable of accurately measuring flow angles in the yaw plane. These probes can be utilized inside a jet engine hot section for diagnostics and flow characterization. Sand and other particulate pose a significant risk to hot section components and measurement devices in gas turbine engines. The objective of this experiment was to develop a better understanding of the sensitivity of experimental 3-hole pressure probe designs to engine realistic sand fouling. In this study, Wedge, Cylindrical, and Trapezoidal probes were exposed to realistic hot section turbine environments of 1050 C at 65-70 m/s. 0-5 micron Arizona Road Dust(ARD) is heated under these conditions and used to foul the yaw probes. The sand deposited on the probe was observed to peel off the probe in thin sheets during ambient cool down.
Sand fouling was assessed using a stereoscope and digital camera. Probe calibrations were performed in an ambient temperature, open air, calibration jet to mimic engine cold start conditions at Mach numbers of 0.3 and 0.5. Yaw coefficients were calculated for each probe using probe pressure and jet dynamic pressure readings. These coefficients were used to develop calibration curves for each probe initially, and again for every fouling test. Each probe performed differently, but the trends showed that the sand fouling had little impact on the probe error at Mach 0.3, and a slightly increased effect on the probe error at Mach 0.5. The experiment showed that when flow direction was determined using a true dynamic pressure reading from the jet, the probes were able to accurately measure flow direction even after being significantly sanded, some probes holes being over 50% blocked by sand accumulation.
Accelerated erosion testing showed that the trapezoidal yaw probe was by far the most sensitive to sand accumulation, followed by the cylindrical probes, and the least sensitive was the wedge probe. A yaw angle range of interest was chosen to ±10 deg of yaw. The least errors from the Yaw Coefficient, as defined in this report, were found to be in the Trapezoidal and Perpendicular probe configurations. The least error found in the wedge probe. / MS / 3-hole pressure probes are used to measure the speed and direction of air and other fluid flows. These probes can be used inside an active jet engine to measure aspects of the airflow inside the engine during flight. One risk to aircraft engines is sand being ingested into the engine. This can cause significant damage to the engine as well as the hardware inside the engine. The objective of this experiment will be to determine how sand accumulation affects the performance of these probes. The experiment involved sanding the probes in a hot jet, then placing them in front of a room temperature air jet to take measurements. A microscope was used to determine how much sand was on the holes of the probe. Sand was observed to peel off naturally, as the probe cooled from the hot jet. Sand was also noticed to break off during the room temperature jet.
The experiment showed that when the Jet pressures was measured from inside the jet, the probes were able to accurately measure flow direction even after being significantly sanded, <50% of the holes being blocked by sand. Of all the probes tested, the Wedge probe performed the best, though a close second was the Trapezoidal probe.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/96811 |
| Date | 23 August 2018 |
| Creators | Turner, Edward Joseph |
| Contributors | Mechanical Engineering, Ng, Wing Fai, Lowe, K. Todd, Dancey, Clinton L., Pickrell, Gary R. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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