M15.03 Inlet Flashcards
What is total head pressure?
Pressure of the air when brought to rest in front of the wings and intakes
What is compression?
Increases in pressure within the intake at increasing forward speeds
What is recovery?
To regain as much of the ram air velocity as possible and convert it into
pressure at the face of the engine. If all available ram air pressure is
converted, it is known as Total Pressure Recovery
What is intake momentum drag?
As forward speed increases, thrust decreases. This is due to the momentum
of the air passing into the engine in relation to the forward speed of the
aircraft. The amount of thrust produced is proportional to the difference
between the inlet velocity of the airflow and the exit velocity of the exhaust.
Fn = Vo - V
What is ram ratio?
The ratio of the total pressure at the inlet to the compressor, to static pressure
the entrance to the air intake
What is mach number?
It is defined as the speed of an object relative to a fluid medium, divided by
the speed of sound in the same medium. Mach 1 being the speed of sound
What is the speed at which you are subsonic?
Any velocity where all the airflow around a body is below Mach 1
What are the transonic speeds?
The velocity in which both subsonic and supersonic airflow conditions exist
around a body. Generally taken as being in the range of Mach 0.8 to Mach 1.4
What are the supersonic range?
When all the airflow velocity around a body exceeds that of the speed of
sound
Explain the intake shape?
The air intake has an intake nose and an inlet duct.
The air inlet duct gets wider. This shape is named divergent.
Using the Bernoulli Principle, this shape increases the static pressure of air
that is moving through the duct. This is an advantage for the engine
What does the inlet also do?
The intake nose also helps to smooth the airflow.
This stops air disturbances from entering the inlet duct, which would reduce
engine efficiency.
Air disturbances can be caused by damage to the intake nose, ice build-up or
even by crosswinds during low speed aircraft operations.
As the aircraft moves through the air, the air enters the engine from the front.
This is because of the ram air effect at high airspeeds
What occurs with an engine running on the ground?
If the engine is running but the aircraft is not moving, there is no ram air
effect.
In this situation, air is also sucked in from the side of the engine. This is very
dangerous if maintenance must be done to an engine which is running
How does the inlet shape slow down the air?
For air to flow smoothly through a compressor, it’s velocity should be between
Mach 0.4 and 0.7 at the compressor inlet. Therefore, air intakes are designed
to decelerate the airflow: by converting kinetic energy into pressure energy
without any undue shock or losses over a wide range of aircraft speeds
How must an inlet be designed?
It must be designed so that the ram velocity of the air
stream is slowly and smoothly decreasing, while ram pressure is slowly and
smoothly rising. The ideal compressor inlet pressure should be the same as
the total head pressure at the air inlet lip
What is the most efficient inlet type known as?
The pitot type quasi-circular diffuser
Explain nose suction
When total ram recovery has been achieved, the airflow approaching the inlet
will be faster than the compressor is capable of tolerating.
Because of this pressure increase in the inlet the engine benefits by
expending less mechanical energy for compression. The increased pressure
of the free-stream airflow is full forced to accelerate over the outside of the
inlet duct. This acceleration reduces ram drag in front of the inlet and causes
a drop in pressure, producing a suction effect acting in the direction of engine
thrust called ‘nose suction
Explain the compromises of producing nose suction
To produce this effect, the inlet lip radius must be smaller (thinner) than that
required for low speed flight. This will degrade the performance at take off
and low speed flight by causing the air to separate at the interior part of the
inlet lip. As these two requirements conflict with each other, a compromise
towards safety must be made, even at the expense of reduced high speed
performance.
Explain the pitot type inlet at transonic speeds
At transonic speeds the duct is designed to keep the shock wave out. This is
done by using a normal shock diffuser to decelerate the supersonic airflow
efficiently to the speed needed by the compressor.
The normal shock wave will produce a pressure and temperature rise with a
velocity decrease to subsonic before the air enters the duct. This is a subsonic
design behind a normal shock front
How should a pitot inlet be designed for transonic operations?
Ensuring that the inlet lips are as thin as possible allows the angle of the shock
front to be small enough to keep wave drag to a minimum.
The cross section of the inlet must be sufficient for the maximum airflow
requirements of the engine, and will apply to only one particular Mach
number and altitude. This is known as the Critical condition
How would the engine thrust being changed effect the the transonic inlet?
If for the same Mach number, the engine thrust setting is changed, the
pressure at the compressor inlet will also change, causing the shock-wave to
change position and type
Explain what happens in he inlet if RPM demand is reduced in a transonic inlet
If rpm demand is reduced, the pressure in the inlet will rise allowing less air
in, the excess airflow being forced to flow outside the inlet. Because a normal
shock reduces the velocity to subsonic, the spilled air must merge with the
supersonic flow making it unstable and preventing the shock. This causes
the shock to become detached from the lip and move further upstream (Bow
Shock-wave) reducing the Mach number. When this occurs, it is known as the
sub-critical condition
Explain what happens when airflow demand is greater than what the transonic inlet can cope with?
Should airflow demand become greater than the inlet can provide, this will
cause a pressure drop in the inlet causing the shock to be swallowed. This
will allow the airflow to enter the inlet at supersonic velocity. This change in
velocity will be inconsistent with the design of the duct, resulting in complex
shock-waves and turbulence due to flow separation at the duct walls causing
an unacceptable flow into the compressor. This is known as the super-critical
condition
What are the intake losses?
- Frictional losses due to fuselage air/skin friction.
- Frictional losses at the intake duct walls.
- Turbulence losses due to structures or components in the intake.
- Turbo-props cause drag and turbulence losses due to the spinner and blade
roots. - A divided intake duct suffers from losses due to boundary layer problems.
When the aircraft yaws, a loss of ram pressure will exist on one side.
How much of a percentage of thrust loss is encountered with one 1% duct inefficiency?
4%