The performance of aircraft engines can be significantly affected by the variety of foreign particles that are mixed into the air while operating under miscellaneous conditions. In particular, aircraft engines that operate in sandy or dusty conditions may fail within minutes of exposure to particle-laden flow due to foreign particle deposition on hot section components or erosion occurring on the compressor and turbine blades.
For these reasons, the effect of sand ingestion on erosion, which may occur in the turbine and compressor blades, was studied in this master's thesis. In this master's thesis, the effect of sand ingestion on erosion on the M250 turboshaft engine's compressor blades will be investigated with the aid of numerical methods. In this study, we used the OpenFOAM software to solve the multiphase flow problem from the standpoint of finite control methods and the Eulerian-Lagrangian framework. The initial sand distribution conditions were taken from the Ph.D. thesis written by Olshefski, K. T. (2023) [1]. The compressor blade was modeled as 2D, which has a NACA 6510 profile shape, with a chord length of 63 mm.
The results show that the leading edge and the suction side of the compressor, i.e. the upper half of the compressor, eroded more compared to the trailing edge, and the pressure side. Results also show that as the sand particle distribution becomes non-uniform the most eroded region shifts toward the trailing edge. In addition, for varying angles of attack, the region where the erosion occurs alters periodically. We observed that as the angle of attack increases, the eroded region shifts toward the trailing edge, but when the angle of attack is kept increasing the eroded region shifts back to the leading edge again.
In conclusion, the non-uniformity of sand particle loading has a strong effect on the determination of the eroded regions. Furthermore, the variation of the angle of attack has a huge role in both the determination of eroded regions and the amount of eroded material. / Master of Science / In this master's thesis, the effect of sand ingestion on compressor blade erosion was investigated with the help of numerical methods. The compressor is one of the vital parts of air-breathing engines such as turboshaft, turbofan, turbojet, and turboprop engines. Therefore, the erosion on the compressor blades may cause pressure surges, which could cause severe problems in the operation of aircraft or airplanes operating under dusty conditions.
Historically, it is reported that a TransAmerican aircraft propelled by Alison T-56 engines lost two of its four engines after 3 to 4 minutes of exposure to volcanic ash while flying over Mt. St. Helens in 1980. Another example of the effects of sand ingestion is an MV-22 Osprey crash that happened during a training exercise in Hawaii, claiming the lives of two US Marines and injuring twenty other personnel in 2015. It was attributed that the cause of the fatal accident was the ingestion of dust that caused engine failure.
Therefore, our intention in studying this field is to have an understanding of the regions of compressor blades that are vulnerable to erosion.
In this master's thesis, numerical methods based on the finite volume method were used to obtain numerical solutions to estimate erosion on the compressor blade by utilizing OpenFOAM. We would like to recommend a nice OpenFOAM tutorial for those who are interested in applying numerical methods using OpenFOAM, taught by Jozsef Nagy accessible on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/@OpenFOAMJozsefNagy.
Also, for creating geometry and mesh generation of an airfoil for the use of OpenFOAM, we would like to recommend the tutorial presented by Ali Ikhsanul, accessible on YouTube via this link https://www.youtube.com/@aliikhsanul7982.
These tutorial videos could help those who are interested in Openfoam but do not have much experience with Openfoam.
The work in this master's thesis indicates that the leading edge of the compressor blade is more prone to be eroded than the trailing edge. In addition, it is shown that the eroded region distribution is highly dependent on the angle of attack of sand particles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/117334 |
| Date | 10 January 2024 |
| Creators | Cagdas, Taha Irfan |
| Contributors | Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Massa, Luca, Lowe, K. Todd, Wang, Kevin Guanyuan |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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