Experimental Study on Emission Performance of an LPP/TVC

A key issue in the commercial aircraft engine design is environmental acceptability, and designers are continually challenged to reduce emissions. In this paper, an experimental investigation is performed to evaluate the emission performance of a liquid-fueled trapped vortex combustor （TVC） under lean premixed prevaporized （LPP） mode. When operating as an LPP system, a TVC is fueled both in the cavities and in the main stream. The correlations between the emission performance and the total ex- cess air ratio, the positions （4 positions） of the fuel injectors in the main stream, and the inlet temperature are obtained. Experimental results show that both the volume concentrations of unburnt hydrocarbon （UHC） and NOv （NO, NOxusually grouped together as NOx） increase with the increase of total excess air ratio from 1.5 to 3.0; the emission performance relies heavily on the position of the main stream injector, and the best perfomlance is achieved at Position 4 in the experiments, the increase of the inlet temperature impacts on the emission performance positively： the smallest volume concentrations of UHC and NO,. obtained in the experiment are 94×10^-6 and 2.3× 10 ^-6 respectively. This paper validates the feasibility of low emissions for an LPP/TVC and provides a reference for further optimization of TVCs.

CFD Study of NO_x Emissions in a Model Commercial Aircraft Engine Combustor

Air worthiness requirements of the aircraft engine emission bring new challenges to the combustor research and design. With the motivation to design high performance and clean combustor, computational fluid dynamics （CFD） is utilized as the powerful design approach. In this paper, Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） equations of reactive two-phase flow in an experimental low emission combustor is performed. The numerical approach uses an implicit compressible gas solver together with a Lagrangian liquid-phase tracking method and the extended coherent flamelet model for turbulence-combustion interaction. The NOx formation is modeled by the concept of post-processing, which resolves the NOx transport equation with the assumption of frozen temperature distribution. Both turbulence-combustion interaction model and NOx formation model are firstly evaluated by the comparison of experimental data published in open literature of a lean direct injection （LDI） combustor. The test rig studied in this paper is called low emission stirred swirl （LESS） combustor, which is a two-stage model combustor, fueled with liquid kerosene （RP-3） and designed by Beihang University （BUAA）. The main stage of LESS combustor employs the principle of lean prevaporized and premixed （LPP） concept to reduce pollutant, and the pilot stage depends on a diffusion flame for flame stabili-zation. Detailed numerical results including species distribution, turbulence performance and burning performance are qualita-tively and quantitatively evaluated. Numerical prediction of NOx emission shows a good agreement with test data at both idle condition and full power condition of LESS combustor. Preliminary results of the flame structure are shown in this paper. The flame stabilization mechanism and NOx reduction effort are also discussed with in-depth analysis.