DEVELOPMENT, NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF A NEW RECUPERATOR DESIGN FOR AERO ENGINES APPLICATIONS

摘要

Targeting the development of more efficient aero engine designs, various concepts have been considered through the previous years, among which is the Intercooled Recuperative Aero engine (IRA) concept. In the IRA concept a system of heat exchangers is mounted in the hot-gas exhaust nozzle, downstream of the low-pressure turbine focusing on the exploitation of the waste heat exhaust gasses for preheating the compressor discharge air just before the latter enters the combustion chamber, resulting in fuel consumption and pollutants emission reduction. In the present work a new heat exchanger design for use as a recuperator is proposed for possible implementation in the IRA engine, based on an annular configuration design which is more easily integrated in an aero engine. The new recuperator external pressure losses are computationally and experimentally investigated for laboratory conditions, providing very good agreement. Additionally, the pressure losses just before the recuperator were further minimized by introducing riblet films inside the exhaust conical nozzle. The optimized recuperator characteristics were included in a thermodynamic analysis of the IRA engine and it was shown that considerable improvement in fuel consumption and pollutant emissions reduction could be achieved.