Challenges of future aircraft propulsion: A review of distributed propulsion technology and its potential application for the all electric commercial aircraft

Meeting NASA's N+3 goals requires a fundamental shift in approach to aircraft and engine design. Material and design improvements allow higher pressure and higher temperature core engines which improve the thermal efficiency. Propulsive efficiency, the other half of the overall efficiency equation, however, is largely determined by the fan pressure ratio (FPR). Lower FPR increases propulsive efficiency, but also dramatically reduces fan shaft speed through the combination of larger diameter fans and reduced fan tip speed limits. The result is that below an FPR of 1.5 the maximum fan shaft speed makes direct drive turbines problematic. However, it is the low pressure ratio fans that allow the improvement in propulsive efficiency which, along with improvements in thermal efficiency in the core, contributes strongly to meeting the N+3 goals for fuel burn reduction. The lower fan exhaust velocities resulting from lower FPRs are also key to meeting the aircraft noise goals. Adding a gear box to the standard turbofan engine allows acceptable turbine speeds to be maintained. However, development of a 50,000+ hp gearbox required by fans in a large twin engine transport aircraft presents an extreme technical challenge, therefore another approach is needed. This paper presents a propulsion system which transmits power from the turbine to the fan electrically rather than mechanically. Recent and anticipated advances in high temperature superconducting generators, motors, and power lines offer the possibility that such devices can be used to transmit turbine power in aircraft without an excessive weight penalty. Moving to such a power transmission system does more than provide better matching between fan and turbine shaft speeds. The relative ease with which electrical power can be distributed throughout the aircraft opens up numerous other possibilities for new aircraft and propulsion configurations and modes of operation. This paper discusses a number of these new possibilities. The Boeing N2 hybrid-wing-body (HWB) is used as a baseline aircraft for this study. The two pylon mounted conventional turbofans are replaced by two wing-tip mounted turboshaft engines, each driving a superconducting generator. Both generators feed a common electrical bus which distributes power to an array of superconducting motor-driven fans in a continuous nacelle centered along the trailing edge of the upper surface of the wing-body. A key finding was that traditional inlet performance methodology has to be modified when most of the air entering the inlet is boundary layer air. A very thorough and detailed propulsion/airframe integration (PAI) analysis is required at the very beginning of the design process since embedded engine inlet performance must be based on conditions at the inlet lip rather than freestream conditions. Examination of a range of fan pressure ratios yielded a minimum Thrust-specific-fuel-consumption (TSFC) at the aerodynamic design point of the vehicle (31,000 ft /Mach 0.8) between 1.3 and 1.35 FPR. We deduced that this was due to the higher pressure losses prior to the fan inlet as well as higher losses in the 2-D inlets and nozzles. This FPR is likely to be higher than the FPR that yields a minimum TSFC in a pylon mounted engine. 1

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Turboelectric Distributed Propulsion Engine Cycle Analysis for Hybrid-Wing-Body Aircraft

Stochastic model theory of broadband shock associated noise from supersonic jets

Although civil aircraft environmental performance has been important since the beginnings of commercial aviation, continuously increasing air traffic and a rise in public awareness have made aircraft noise and emissions two of the most pressing issues hampering commercial aviation growth today. This, in turn, has created the demand for an understanding of the impact of noise and emissions requirements on the design of the aircraft. In response, the purpose of this research is to explore the feasibility of integrating noise and emissions as optimization objectives at the aircraft conceptual design stage, thereby allowing a quantitative analysis of the tradeoffs between environmental performance and operating cost. A preliminary design tool that uses a multiobjective genetic algorithm to determine optimal aircraft configurations and to estimate the sensitivities between the conflicting objectives of low noise, low emissions, and operating costs was developed. Beyond evaluating the ability of a design to meet regulations and establishing environmental performance trades, the multidisciplinary design tool allows the generation of conventional but extremely low-noise and low-emissions designs that could, in the future, dramatically decrease the environmental impact of commercial aviation, albeit at the expense of increased operating cost. The tool incorporates ANOPP, a noise prediction code developed at NASA Langley Research Center, NASA Glenn Research Center's Engine Performance Program engine simulator, and aircraft design, analysis, and optimization modules developed at Stanford University. The trend that emerges from this research among the seemingly conflicting objectives of noise, fuel consumption, and NO x emissions is the opportunity for significant reductions in environmental impact by designing the aircraft to fly slower and at lower altitude.

Framework for Aircraft Conceptual Design and Environmental Performance Studies

The Silent Aircraft Initiative is a research project funded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute aimed at reducing aircraft noise to the point where it is imperceptible in the urban environments around airports. The propulsion system being developed for this project has a thermodynamic cycle based on an ultrahigh bypass ratio turbofan combined with a variable area exhaust nozzle and an embedded installation. This cycle has been matched to the flight mission and thrust requirements of an all-lifting body airframe, and through precise scheduling of the variable exhaust nozzle, the engine operating conditions have been optimized for maximum thrust at top-of-climb, minimum fuel consumption during cruise, and minimum jet noise at low altitude. This paper proposes engine mechanical arrangements that can meet the cycle requirements and, when installed in an appropriate airframe, will be quiet relative to current turbofans. To reduce the engine weight, a system with a gearbox, or some other form of shaft speed reduction device, is proposed. This is combined with a low-speed fan and a turbine with high gap-chord spacing to further reduce turbomachinery source noise. An engine configuration with three fans driven by a single core is also presented, and this is expected to have further weight, fuel burn, and noise benefits.

Engine design studies for a silent aircraft

A semiempirical model for predicting the noise generated by conventional velocity-profile jets exhausting from coaxial nozzles is presented and compared with small-scale static data. The present method is an updated version of that part of the original NASA Aircraft Noise Prediction Program (1974) relating to coaxial jet noise. The new procedure is more theoretically based and has also been improved by some empirical adjustments.

Conventional profile coaxial jet noise prediction

A semi‐empirical model for predicting the noise generated by jets exhausting from circular nozzles is presented and compared with small‐scale static and simulated‐flight data. The present method is an updated version of that part of the original NASA Aircraft Noise Prediction Program (1974) relating to circular jet noise. The earlier method has been shown to agree reasonably well with experimental static and flight data for jet velocities up to ∼ 520 m/s. The poorer agreement at higher jet velocities appeared to be due primarily to the manner in which supersonic convection effects were formulated. The purely empirical supersonic convection formulation is replaced in the present method by one based on theoretical considerations. Other improvements of an empirical nature have been included based on model‐jet/free‐jet simulated‐flight tests. The effects of nozzle size, jet velocity, jet temperature, and flight are included.

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An improved prediction method for the noise generated in flight by circular jets

A semiempirical model for predicting the noise generated by conventional velocity profile jets exhausting from coaxial nozzles is presented and compared with small scale static and simulated flight data. Improvements to the basic circular jet noise prediction are developed which improve the accuracy, especially at high jet velocity and near the jet axis.

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An Improved Prediction Method for Noise Generated by Conventional Profile Coaxial Jets

Development of good predictive models for jet noise has always been plagued by the difficulty in obtaining good quality data over a wide range of conditions in different facilities.We consider such issues very carefully in selecting data to be used in developing our model. Flight effects are of critical importance, and none of the means of determining them are without significant problems. Free-jet flight simulation facilities are very useful, and can provide meaningful data so long as they can be analytically transformed to the flight frame of reference. In this report we show that different methodologies used by NASA and industry to perform this transformation produce very different results, especially in the rear quadrant; this compels us to rely largely on static data to develop our model, but we show reasonable agreement with simulated flight data when these transformation issues are considered. A persistent problem in obtaining good quality data is noise generated in the experimental facility upstream of the test nozzle: valves, elbows, obstructions, and especially the combustor can contribute significant noise, and much of this noise is of a broadband nature, easily confused with jet noise. Muffling of these sources is costly in terms of size as well as expense, and it is particularly difficult in flight simulation facilities, where compactness of hardware is very important, as discussed by Viswanathan (Ref. 13). We feel that the effects of jet density on jet mixing noise may have been somewhat obscured by these problems, leading to the variable density exponent used in most jet noise prediction procedures including our own. We investigate this issue, applying Occam s razor, (e.g., Ref. 14), in a search for the simplest physically meaningful model that adequately describes the observed phenomena. In a similar vein, we see no reason to reject the Lighthill approach; it provides a very solid basis upon which to build a predictive procedure, as we believe we demonstrate in this report. Another feature of our approach is that the analyses are all conducted with lossless spectra, rather than Standard Day spectra, as is often done in industry. We feel that it is important to isolate the effects of as many physical processes as practical. Atmospheric attenuation can then be included using the relations developed for NASA by Shields and Bass (Ref. 15), which are available in both FOOTPR and ANOPP. The current approach to coannular jet noise prediction used in FOOTPR is reported in Reference 16, which updates the earlier conventional-velocity-profile (CVP, Ref. 17) and inverted-velocity-profile (IVP, Ref. 18) models.

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Jet Noise Modeling for Coannular Nozzles Including the Effects of Chevrons

A concept for a forced-flow once-through water vaporizer for application to resistojet thrusters was evaluated as an element of a laboratory model thruster and tested to investigate its operating characteristics. The vaporizer design concept employs flow swirling to attach the liquid flow to the boiler chamber wall, providing for separation of the two liquid phases. This vaporizer was modified with a nozzle and a centrally-located heater to facilitate vaporization, superheating, and expansion of the propellant, allowing it to function as a resistojet. Performance was measured at thrust levels ranging from 170 to 360 mN and at power levels ranging from 443 to 192 W. Maximum measured specific impulse was 192 sec.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880015584/downloads/19880015584.pdf

James R. Stone

Papers

Conventional profile coaxial jet noise prediction

An improved prediction method for the noise generated in flight by circular jets

An Improved Prediction Method for Noise Generated by Conventional Profile Coaxial Jets

Jet Noise Modeling for Coannular Nozzles Including the Effects of Chevrons

Development of a liquid-fed water resistojet