High Fidelity Modeling of the Acceleration of a Turboshaft Engine During a Restart

Author(s):  
Antoine Ferrand ◽  
Marc Bellenoue ◽  
Yves Bertin ◽  
Radu Cirligeanu ◽  
Patrick Marconi ◽  
...  

In order to decrease the fuel consumption, a new flight mode is being considered for twin-engine helicopters, in which one engine is put into sleeping mode (a mode in which the gas generator is kept at a stabilized, sub-idle speed by means of an electric motor, with no combustion), while the remaining engine operates at nominal load. The restart of the engine in sleeping mode is therefore deemed critical for safety reasons. This efficient new flight mode has raised the interest in the modeling of the restart of a turboshaft engine. In this context, the initial conditions of the simulations are better known relative to a ground start, in particular the air flow through the gas generator is constant, the fuel and oil system states are known and temperatures of the casings are equal to ambient. During the restart phase of the engine, the gas generator speed is kept at constant speed until the light-up is detected by a rise in inter-turbine temperature, then the starter torque increases, accelerating the engine towards idle speed. In this paper, the modeling of the acceleration of the gas generator from light-up to idle and above idle speeds is presented. Details on the light-up process are not addressed here. The study is based on the high-fidelity aero-thermodynamic restart model that is currently being developed for a 2000 horse power, free turbine turboshaft. In this case, the term high-fidelity refers not only to the modeling of the flow path components but it also includes all the subsystems, secondary air flows and controls with a high level of detail. The physical phenomena governing the acceleration of the turboshaft engine following a restart — mainly the transient evolution of the combustion efficiency and the power loss by heat soakage — are discussed in this paper and modeling solutions are presented. The results of the simulations are compared to engine test data, highlighting that the studied phenomena have an impact on the acceleration of the turboshaft engine and that the model is able to correctly predict acceleration trends.

Author(s):  
Antoine Ferrand ◽  
Marc Bellenoue ◽  
Yves Bertin ◽  
Patrick Marconi

Abstract Inflight shutdown of one engine for twin-engine helicopters have proven beneficial for fuel consumption. A new flight mode is then considered, in which one engine is put into sleep mode (the gas generator is kept at a stabilized, sub-idle speed by means of an electric motor, with no combustion), while the second engine runs almost at nominal load. The ability to restart the engine in sleep mode is then critical for safety reasons. Indeed, the certification of this flight mode involves ensuring a close-to-zero failure rate for in-flight restarts as well as a fast restart capability of the shutdown engine. In this paper, the focus is made on improving the restart time of the shutdown turboshaft engine. Fast restart capability is necessary for flight management reasons. Indeed, in case of a failure of the engine operating close to nominal load while the other one is in sleep mode, there is no more power available and the helicopter can lose up to 15–20 meters per second during autorotation. The restart time becomes a critical parameter to limit the loss of altitude. In the configuration studied, the fast restart is achieved thanks to the electric motor designed to deliver a high torque to the gas generator shaft. This electric motor is powered by an additional battery, more powerful than the conventional one dedicated for standard restarts. The aim of the paper is to assess the potential restart time saving using an approach combining test rig data analysis and numerical results generated by a thermodynamic model able to simulate at very low rotational speed. A gas turbine engine starting process is composed of two main phases: the light-up phase and the acceleration phase. It is important to understand the detailed phenomenology of these two phases as well as the various sub-systems involved, first to highlight the influencing parameters of both phases and then to establish an exhaustive listing of the possible time optimizations. From the test rig campaign, conducted at Safran Helicopter Engines on a high power free turbine turboshaft engine, we are able to accurately break down the phases of the start-up sequence, which helps us to identify what steps of the sequence worth shortening. With the engine performance thermodynamic model, we can then use the information gathered from the test rig analysis to further predict how to save time and to give guidelines for developing new control strategies. The results of this study show that a fast restart going from sleep mode to max power speed can be up to 60% faster than a conventional restart going from sleep mode to idle speed. This is significantly faster, especially if one takes into account the higher final speed targeted by the fast restart.


2020 ◽  
Vol 04 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guohai Jia ◽  
Lijun Li ◽  
Li Dai ◽  
Zicheng Gao ◽  
Jiping Li

Background: A biomass pellet rotary burner was chosen as the research object in order to study the influence of excess air coefficient on the combustion efficiency. The finite element simulation model of biomass rotary burner was established. Methods: The computational fluid dynamics software was applied to simulate the combustion characteristics of biomass rotary burner in steady condition and the effects of excess air ratio on pressure field, velocity field and temperature field was analyzed. Results: The results show that the flow velocity inside the burner gradually increases with the increase of inlet velocity and the maximum combustion temperature is also appeared in the middle part of the combustion chamber. Conclusion: When the excess air coefficient is 1.0 with the secondary air outlet velocity of 4.16 m/s, the maximum temperature of the rotary combustion chamber is 2730K with the secondary air outlet velocity of 6.66 m/s. When the excess air ratio is 1.6, the maximum temperature of the rotary combustion chamber is 2410K. When the air ratio is 2.4, the maximum temperature of the rotary combustion chamber is 2340K with the secondary air outlet velocity of 9.99 m/s. The best excess air coefficient is 1.0. The experimental value of combustion temperature of biomass rotary burner is in good agreement with the simulation results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Aravind Balakrishnan ◽  
Jaeyoung Lee ◽  
Ashish Gaurav ◽  
Krzysztof Czarnecki ◽  
Sean Sedwards

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an attractive way to implement high-level decision-making policies for autonomous driving, but learning directly from a real vehicle or a high-fidelity simulator is variously infeasible. We therefore consider the problem of transfer reinforcement learning and study how a policy learned in a simple environment using WiseMove can be transferred to our high-fidelity simulator, W ise M ove . WiseMove is a framework to study safety and other aspects of RL for autonomous driving. W ise M ove accurately reproduces the dynamics and software stack of our real vehicle. We find that the accurately modelled perception errors in W ise M ove contribute the most to the transfer problem. These errors, when even naively modelled in WiseMove , provide an RL policy that performs better in W ise M ove than a hand-crafted rule-based policy. Applying domain randomization to the environment in WiseMove yields an even better policy. The final RL policy reduces the failures due to perception errors from 10% to 2.75%. We also observe that the RL policy has significantly less reliance on velocity compared to the rule-based policy, having learned that its measurement is unreliable.


2011 ◽  
Vol 383-390 ◽  
pp. 2603-2607
Author(s):  
Yao Yi ◽  
Guang Jian Chen ◽  
Jin Ling Jia

Focusing on energy-saving issues of boiler, this paper finds out the combustion conditions inside boiler furnace by monitoring and analysis on oxygen content of flue gas, carbon content of fly ash, CO and CO2 contents. The intelligent control of boiler combustion was achieved and combustion efficiency was rosen. Using neural network controlling model, automatic optimization of oxygen delivery volume,coal delivery volume, the total wind pressure of primary air, the secondary air-door opening degree and furnace negative pressure were achieved, and the boiler efficiency increasing by 5 ~ 7%.


Author(s):  
Yoichiro Ohkubo ◽  
Osamu Azegami ◽  
Hiroshi Sato ◽  
Yoshinori Idota ◽  
Shinichiro Higuchi

A 300 kWe class gas turbine which has a two-shaft and simple-cycle has been developed to apply to co-generation systems. The gas turbine engine is operated in the range of about 30% partial load to 100% load. The gas turbine combustor requires a wide range of stable operations and low NOx characteristics. A double staged lean premixed combustor, which has a primary combustion duct made of Si3N4 ceramics, was developed to meet NOx regulations of less than 80 ppm (corrected at 0% oxygen). The gas turbine with the combustor has demonstrated superior low-emission performance of around 40 ppm (corrected at 0% oxygen) of NOx, and more than 99.5% of combustion efficiency between 30% and 100% of engine load. Endurance testing has demonstrated stable high combustion performance over 3,000 hours in spite of a wide compressor inlet air temperature (CIT) range of 5 to 35 degree C.. While increasing the gas generator turbine speed, the flow rate of primary fuel was controlled to hold a constant equivalence ratio of around 0.5 in the CIT range of more than 15 C. The output power was also decreased while increasing the CIT, in order to keep a constant temperature at the turbine inlet. The NOx decreases in the CIT range of more than 15 C. On the other hand, the NOx increases in the CIT range of less than 15 C when the output power was kept a constant maximum power. As a result, NOx emission has a peak value of about 40 ppm at 15 C.


Author(s):  
A. Karl Owen ◽  
Anne Daugherty ◽  
Doug Garrard ◽  
Howard C. Reynolds ◽  
Richard D. Wright

A generic one-dimensional gas turbine engine model, developed at the Arnold Engineering Development Center, has been configured to represent the gas generator of a General Electric axial-centrifugal gas turbine engine in the six kg/sec airflow class. The model was calibrated against experimental test results for a variety of initial conditions to insure that the model accurately represented the engine over the range of test conditions of interest. These conditions included both assisted (with a starter motor) and unassisted (altitude windmill) starts. The model was then exercised to study a variety of engine configuration modifications designed to improve its starting characteristics and thus quantify potential starting improvements for the next generation of gas turbine engines. This paper discusses the model development and describes the test facilities used to obtain the calibration data. The test matrix for the ground level testing is also presented. A companion paper presents the model calibration results and the results of the trade-off study.


1968 ◽  
Vol 72 (690) ◽  
pp. 490-497
Author(s):  
J. B. Taylor

Propulsion systems selected for commercial transports must provide efficient and reliable performance over a broad range of conditions. These aeroplanes are used over both short and long route segments, on non-standard days, and at a range of altitudes to meet air-line schedule requirements. This paper covers some of the design parameters that were considered in the integration of the induction system, secondary air system, jet nozzle and the basic turbojet gas generator for the SST. During recent years some of the most important gains in propulsion efficiency have resulted from the development of inlets, engines and exhaust nozzles which are matched over a broad range of operating conditions. An efficient propulsion system for a supersonic transport depends upon very close matching of these components. This, of course, requires a better understanding of the capabilities and limitations of each of these major components. For the supersonic transport, 50% or more of the gross weight will be comprised of propulsion system and fuel and less than 10% will be payload.


1998 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 1589-1593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Weickert ◽  
Izydor Apostol

ABSTRACT Coexpression of di-α-globin and β-globin in Escherichia coli in the presence of exogenous heme yielded high levels of soluble, functional recombinant human hemoglobin (rHb1.1). High-level expression of rHb1.1 provides a good model for measuring mistranslation in heterologous proteins. rHb1.1 does not contain isoleucine; therefore, any isoleucine present could be attributed to mistranslation, most likely mistranslation of one or more of the 200 codons that differ from an isoleucine codon by 1 bp. Sensitive amino acid analysis of highly purified rHb1.1 typically revealed ≤0.2 mol of isoleucine per mol of hemoglobin. This corresponds to a translation error rate of ≤0.001, which is not different from typical translation error rates found for E. coli proteins. Two different expression systems that resulted in accumulation of globin proteins to levels equivalent to ∼20% of the level of E. colisoluble proteins also resulted in equivalent translational fidelity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 20200007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunzhou Wan ◽  
Agastya P. Bhati ◽  
Stefan J. Zasada ◽  
Peter V. Coveney

A central quantity of interest in molecular biology and medicine is the free energy of binding of a molecule to a target biomacromolecule. Until recently, the accurate prediction of binding affinity had been widely regarded as out of reach of theoretical methods owing to the lack of reproducibility of the available methods, not to mention their complexity, computational cost and time-consuming procedures. The lack of reproducibility stems primarily from the chaotic nature of classical molecular dynamics (MD) and the associated extreme sensitivity of trajectories to their initial conditions. Here, we review computational approaches for both relative and absolute binding free energy calculations, and illustrate their application to a diverse set of ligands bound to a range of proteins with immediate relevance in a number of medical domains. We focus on ensemble-based methods which are essential in order to compute statistically robust results, including two we have recently developed, namely thermodynamic integration with enhanced sampling and enhanced sampling of MD with an approximation of continuum solvent. Together, these form a set of rapid, accurate, precise and reproducible free energy methods. They can be used in real-world problems such as hit-to-lead and lead optimization stages in drug discovery, and in personalized medicine. These applications show that individual binding affinities equipped with uncertainty quantification may be computed in a few hours on a massive scale given access to suitable high-end computing resources and workflow automation. A high level of accuracy can be achieved using these approaches.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Pengzhong Liu ◽  
Fang Niu ◽  
Xuewen Wang ◽  
Fei Guo ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
...  

The swirl burner with a prechamber was used in a 14 MW pulverized-coal combustion experiment to investigate the influence of inner and secondary air ratios (ISA/OSA) on the combustion characteristic and flame shape in this work. The temperatures and species concentrations in the prechamber were measured via the flue gas analyzer and thermocouples. The flame shape beyond the prechamber outlet was captured by using a high-speed camera. The results showed that the combustion efficiency was increased and low nitrogen combustion was achieved by adopting the swirl burner with a prechamber. The high temperature corrosion and slagging phenomenon did not occur in the prechamber. The influence of ISA/OSA on temperature and species concentration profiles at different areas in the prechamber was different. The flame shape size exhibited an inflection point with increasing ISA/OSA. Considering, comprehensively, the temperature peak, near wall temperature, oxygen-free zone, CO concentration, flame length, flame diameter, and divergence angle, the case of ISA/OSA =1 : 2 had great processing on combustion efficiency and NOx emission. Thus, ISA/OSA = 1 : 2 was selected as the optimized case under experiment conditions.


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