NIPSE (Novel Integration of Powerplant System Equipment) was a 3-year research and innovation project in the field of aeronautical engineering, launched in June 2015. The project addressed key equipment and integration challenges linked to novel aircraft engine architectures, in particular Ultra-High Bypass Ratio (UHBR) powerplants.
Emerging new aircraft engine solutions offer the potential for significant reduction in fuel burn, emissions, and noise, which is in line with today’s environmental and societal needs. More precisely, these novel engine architectures allow for improvements in propulsion efficiency by increasing the bypass ratio of the air drawn-in through the fan disk and passing through the nacelle, without more energy being needed.
However, this propulsion efficiency gain does not automatically lead to an improvement in fuel burn, due to several opposing factors: (1) To increase the bypass ratio, the fan diameter has to be increased, leading to bigger nacelle dimensions and an increase in nacelle drag, due to a larger frontal surface area. (2) Aerodynamic losses in the fan duct result in higher performance penalties for UHBR engines, due to the very low fan pressure ratio. (3) Fan operability issues may require some additional devices to ensure effective engine operation.
These factors make it indispensable to come up with technological enablers, such as operability control devices and a shorter and slimmer nacelle. A slimmer nacelle, however, requires moving the equipment installed within the engine and IPPS (Integrated PowerPlant System) away from the fan compartment in the hotter core zone, where temperatures are up to 150°C higher than in the fan zone. At the same time, the installation of the equipment in the core area potentially impacts the access time for maintenance activities.
Based on these various complexities, the technological solutions developed within NIPSE focused on smaller equipment, novel electrical and pneumatic interconnections, more efficient heat exchangers and multivariable optimisation methodologies allowing for equipment integration into the aircraft engine nacelle in a more time and cost-efficient way.
The objectives were described as followed : (1) 15% reduction of the volume required for the IPPS equipment and for temperature deduction functions, and the associated weight of the system and connections, allowing for a 2-3 % fuel burn reduction; (2) 10% reduction of the development time of future engine systems, such as UHBR engines, through an optimised equipment integration; (3) Low access time for maintenance activities despite the optimised position of the engine equipment rearwards in the powerplant, to prevent passenger impact.
