The Electrical Environment Control System (eECS) takes external fresh air from an inlet. Depending on aircraft altitude and type of inlet, debris and contaminants may be ingested and cause premature degradation of pack performances, affecting the cabin air quality and reducing eECS components' lifetime. The project has allowed the development of a novel protective solution to prevent eECS performance degradation due to FOD.
In this sense, the ANTIFOD project is well aligned with Clean Sky 2 which aims to achieve up to a 30% reduction in fuel burn and related CO2 emissions; similar or greater reductions in NOx emissions and to drive the European aviation industry to be commercially competitive in a 30 years period (from 2020-2050).
The main objective of this innovation action has been to develop a Foreign Object Debris (FOD) protection device applied to an electrical ECS fresh air inlet, validated to TRL5. This has been achieved through the following two-stage design process, each with its own secondary objectives:
1. Preliminary design, which has aimed to:
- Capture the top-level requirements, used to develop a set of baseline candidate concepts.
- Use innovative design methods to conduct a concept study.
- Verify prototypes rapidly using a combination of CFD and additive manufacturing comparing calculated separation efficiency and pressure loss.
- Refine the highly ranked concepts via a trade-off study and determine the best-suited solution that meets all the top-level requirements.
- Produce a preliminary design from the winning concept, including feasibility study, sensitivity analysis, risk assessment, and system requirements report, measured through a preliminary design review (PDR) which demonstrates compliance with the user needs.
2. Detailed design, which has aimed to:
- Define an aerodynamic geometry for the intake protection and FOD separation device which demonstrably meets the relevant requirements and integrates with the mechanical interfaces of the
existing intake scoop inlet, scoop ducting and eECS inlets, and is measured through Wall-Modelled LES simulations.
- Produce a detailed design and subsequent manufacture of the full-scale intake protection and FOD separation device.
- Design a test bench to validate the intake protection and FOD separation device
- Deliver two final full-scale working prototypes to the Topic Leader capable to accomplish the project requirements on FOD separation efficiency and pressure drop.
