State of the Art and Expected Results
There are three main aspects of the TRUflow project which are innovative in nature and these are now discussed in turn.
1) Flow visualization ambition
The project partners aim to build a sensor package which is robust and reliable and can be installed in compact spaces to measure internal flows. The importance of field measurements in such tight spaces cannot be understated to the wider aerospace community. Examples such as TRU, or the flow behind high-lift devices, remain some of the last challenges in CFD validation. Current flow diagnostic technology is limited to laboratory-scale measurements or, for example PIV, large-scale freestream measurements. The development of miniaturised sensor packages will also enable installation on real test vehicles such as flight demonstrators or road vehicle demonstrators.
2) New cascade TRU boundary condition
Within the previous CS2 ReLOAD project, ARA used VFM to merge CFD and WTT data, so advancing the TRL of using VFM in this way. TRUflow will mature the use of VFM as a CFD/WTT data fusion tool to generate data for an innovative TRU cascade boundary condition. A successful demonstration of the use of VFM as a data fusion tool to merge CFD and WTT datasets in order to generate a new boundary condition has the potential to reap significant benefits downstream of this project. The new boundary condition has the prospect to reduce the cost and time of the design of the TRU cascades and hence to increase the TRL of this approach. The consortium has not seen this attempted before. It also important to notice that the experimental CFD data will form a unique database for methods and tools validation and verifications. Allowing the TM, the consortium members to increase the TRL of their toolset.
3) New wind tunnel testing capabilities
The development of a new higher power hydraulic motor powering a new turbofan simulator will expand and demonstrate extended testing capabilities of the wind tunnel. New aircraft architectures often present a higher level of integration of the power system into the airframe than current aircraft configurations. Interference between the airframe on the power plant thus becomes more important. The hardware, but also the gained know-how in TRUflow, will allow RUAG to better respond to future requirements for wind tunnel testing of powered models of future aircraft concepts.
Impact
The focus of this project is to develop and prove the innovative measurement technique required for the testing of short and slim aero-engine nacelle fan with TRU. A secondary focus is also the development of a surrogate model for the design of TRU cascades.
In terms of the impact and benefit to the competitiveness of Europe and associated countries, it is envisaged that the work will be of significance to stakeholders of aero-engine, aircraft as well as wider industrial and academic parties through exploitation of the generic aspects of experimental methods, CFD validation, and improvements to aerodynamic design of TRU cascades systems.
