Upgrading High-Altitude Test Bench for Small-Sized Gas turbine Engines and Their Components

Аuthors

Novosadov D. A.^*, Filinov E. P.^**, Ostapyuk Y. A.^***, Zagadov I. A.^****

Samara National Research University named after Academician S.P. Korolev, Moskovskoe shosse, 34, Samara, Russia

*e-mail: novdanil2001@gmail.com
**e-mail: filinov@ssau.ru
***e-mail: ostapyuk.tdla@ssau.ru
****e-mail: Ilyazagadov@yandex.ru

Abstract

At present, the small-size gas turbine engines (micro gas turbines, MGT) are gaining increasing prevalence. It is widely recognized that MGTs are prospective devices for meeting future energy demands. Besides, these small-scale engines are being employed in the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles, as well as in the aircraft modeling, and as hardware of the educational test benches. As is well known, the life cycle of an aircraft engine consists of the following stages: design, development, manufacturing, operation, and disposal. The design and development phases are being accompanied by a series of experimental studies, including both subassemblage-level and full-engine tests. High-altitude-and-climatic testing holds a special place among these experimental methods; however, reliable high-altitude test benches remain extremely scarce. On the assumption of the above said, there is a clear need for simple and cost-effective test rigs that can be utilized both for scientific research and for quality control of commercial products.
The following works were being performed for the upgrading. They include thermal pressure chamber replacement by the new one with the capability of ensuring altitude capaсity up to 11 km and temperature conditions from –50 to +50. The fuel supplying system with the possibility of the fuel cooldown in two ways was restored and the vacuum station with the VVН2-50 pumps was depreserved. A new vacuum line to the test bench was designed, as well as all the pipeline plugs were replaced by the electric ones.
Upon the bench upgrading completion, validation tests should be conducted. The selected test object is a combustion chamber of a small-size gas turbine engine. For the testing purpose, a measurement section was designed to accommodate the selected object. The section is equipped with total and static pressure probes, thermocouples for the total temperature measuring, and a gas sampling probe [20]. The measurement section evaluation was performed with the 3-D CFD computations in Ansys CFX, which confirmed smooth flow-around of the designed components. This year, tests of the 220 N and 550 N thrust gas turbine engines with simulated altitude conditions are planned on the basis of the updated test bench.

Keywords:

high-altitude test bench upgrading, measurement section designing, restoring fuel-supply system, working fluid parameters measuring.

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