The present SALAMANDER project belongs to the Clean Sky 2 programme, and offers cooperation between DASSAULT SYSTEMS, world-leader in LBM solutions (amongst other important activities), and ALTRAN, world-leader in Engineering Solutions and outsourced R&D, through its Expertise Center dedicated to Fluids and Thermal Engineering. Its ultimate target is to produce fluid and solid temperature data in soak-back conditions which will be used by the Topic Leader to achieve TRL 6 for the Turboprop Demonstrator.
The projects deploys in 3 phases:
- First, perform high-accuracy, state-of-the-art LBM simulations, of the full engine.
- Second, develop a reduced-cost, Nodal-network model, for the channel region.
- Finally,combine LBM (accuracy) & Nodal methods (reduced-cost) to assess soak-back at acceptable cost in the TP Demonstrator.
Technical challenges are numerous: Physics (Free Convection/ High Mach numbers); Modelling (LBM/Nodal Network Coupling); Computational capacity (Long-Transient/ Engine Geometry/ 3D Fluid & Solid). The highest levels of numerical expertise are required, especially in the field of CFD.
Eventually, the outcome model delivery will allow the Topic Leader to improve the design of the TurboProp demonstrator as well as future products. Finally, EU industrials and environment shall greatly benefit from this study, thanks to the dissemination of this work.
Achieving high fidelity and accuracy in modelling enables to:
- Reduce test dependency to validate product configurations, and potentially in mid-term reduce the cost of flight tests campaign and the time to market.
- Develop more efficient and reliable systems, make each trade-off easier, and facilitate decisionmaking about design.
- Optimize the thermal management, gain in mass and in consumption.
The initial purposes has been fulfilled, as a full methodology following the base concept could indeed be developed and implemented. When tested against both experimental and more accurate simulations, results were found in good agreement, while significantly reducing the computational resources needed for the simulations (~50%). Finally, the complete process could be applied to the new generation Turboprop demonstrator that Safran Helicopter Engines is developing in the frame of CSJU. This demonstrates that the methodology is functional and could be applied to other engines as well.
Moreover LBM solver is still not considered as the mainstream CFD software among CFD practitioners.
The LBM market represents less than 10% of the complete CFD market, but this proportion is expected to grow strongly in the coming years, notably thanks to the detection of industrial cases where the addedvalue is significant and the growing capacity of fast computation. Besides the turnover associated with the CFD market is expected to triple in the next 10 years. These elements of market also suggest that there will be real opportunities for the new methodologies implemented within the framework of this project.
