Flight-Testing of the FAA Onboard Inert Gas Generation System on an Airbus A320.

摘要

Extensive development and analysis has illustrated that fuel tank inerting could potentially be cost-effective if air separation modules (ASM), based on hollow-fiber membrane technology, could be used in an efficient way. To illustrate this, the Federal Aviation Administration has developed an onboard inert gas generation system that uses aircraft bleed air to generate nitrogen-enriched air (NEA) at varying flow and purity (oxygen concentration) during a commercial airplane flight cycle. A series of ground and flight tests were performed, in conjunction with Airbus, designed to prove the simplified inerting concept. The system was mounted in the cargo bay of an A320 operated by Airbus for the purposes of research and development and used to inert the aircraft center wing fuel tank during testing. The system and center wing fuel tank were instrumented to allow for the analysis of the system performance and inerting capability. The results of the tests indicated that the concept of the simplified inerting system is valid and that the air separation module dynamic characteristics were as expected. ASM pressure had the expected effect on flow rate and purity; however, bleed air consumption was greater than expected during cruise. The fuel tank inerting results illustrated that no stratification or heterogeneous oxygen concentrations occurred in the tank. The measured average tank ullage oxygen concentration data agreed well with a simple analytical model applied to the flight test data. The measured effect of the high-flow mode was significant, allowing the single-membrane configuration to maintain an inert ullage during the entire flight cycle, even with the very high rate of descent employed for the flight tests. Fuel had virtually no effect on the resulting oxygen concentrations observed in all the tests.