Fan alternatives for next generation engines

Purpose and goal

The project Fan Alternatives for Next Generation engines (FANG) aims to conceptually design propulsive fans for subsonic aircraft. The goal is to connect aerodynamic performance to mechanical design, weight and integration to predict how the fan´s design affects the aircraft weight and fuel consumption. This will enable optimization of these design parameters and forecast future development trends of turbofans, and thus how requirements will evolve for the components designed and manufactured by GKN Aerospace.

Expected results and effects

The project has developed a method to calibrate thermodynamical models on known engine performance, which has been applied on two modern engines. The fan efficiency has been correlated with fan face inlet Mach number, number of blades, their aspect ratio, and rotational speed. This correlation has been used together with a thermodynamic model and a weight model to optimize the design of an engine. The results will be used to develop technology for fossil free aviation at GKN Aerospace. The project team has published two articles and a licentiate thesis.

Planned approach and implementation

The project FANG was a cooperation between GKN Aerospace and Chalmers. The thermodynamic model GESTPAN and correlations for component performance was used to statistically calculate which values of engine design parameters which most probably correspond to published engine performance. Design-of-experiments was used to create a large number of possible fan geometries. Using automatic grid generation performance of these fans were calculated and the results were correlated in a meta-model. With the fan and engine model a Pareto optimal set of alternative engines was created.