Optimization of Air Distribution in a Preliminary Design Stage of an Aero-Engine Combustor
Andreas Angersbach, Dieter Bestle · 14th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference · 2014
The design of a modern aero-engine combustor is strongly driven by severe emission regulations. The paper describes an automated preliminary aero-thermal design process for a rich-burn combustor by combining different low fidelity analysis tools in order to speed up the preliminary design loop and provide improved combustor designs. Design evaluation is performed by a knowledge-based preliminary design tool coupled with a network solver. The preliminary design tool provides a 2D geometry model and cooling layout based on industrial in-house design rules. The 1D network solver then calculates the air distribution inside the combustor for two state-of-the-art combustor cooling schemes, i.e., single skin cooling and double skin tiled cooling. The computed air distribution is subsequently used to predict emissions which are minimized by using a genetic multi-objective optimization algorithm. As a result, better designs are obtained with the prescribed approach compared to a human reference design.