CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Small flaps mounted in jet-engine inlet ducts may allow supersonic aircraft to fly faster and farther at less cost, say researchers at the University of Illinois. "When flying at supersonic speeds, shock waves naturally occur in the engine inlet," said Eric Loth, a UI professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering. "The shock waves disrupt the airflow, creating considerable flow separation and significantly reducing engine efficiency." To minimize this effect and prevent boundary-layer flow separation, conventional supersonic engines use a bleed system that removes air through holes in the inlet wall and dumps it out the back. While this keeps the boundary layer attached, it also wastes a fair portion of the ingested airflow.
"Engine efficiency can be improved by covering the holes with ‘smart’ flaps that bend under certain operating conditions," said Loth, the project director of a three-year development effort that includes researchers from the UI, NASA, Boeing and the U.S. Air Force.
Flaps downstream of a shock will bend downward, sucking air from the boundary layer into a cavity below, while flaps upstream of a shock will bend upwards, injecting air from the cavity back into the boundary layer, Loth said. "Recirculating the air not only prevents flow separation, it also improves the engine’s efficiency, since the air is no longer being thrown away."
Thousands of flaps would line an inlet. Resembling slips of paper about one centimeter on a side, the flaps are being made from shape-memory materials such as nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium.
"Shape-memory alloys are materials that can ‘memorize’ a shape and return to it after repeated thermo-mechanical cycling," said Scott White, a UI professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering. "We can design these smart materials to ‘turn on’ and open up under specific conditions of stress and temperature. Their stiffness – and therefore the amount they deflect – can be controlled."
In a series of recent experiments, White characterized the bending behavior of miniature flaps under dynamic loading conditions. He and graduate student Sridhar Krishnan monitored the static and dynamic properties of thin nitinol beams as they deflected under various transformation temperatures.
"Such an analysis is critical to the next stage of our project, where we want to place the flaps under active, closed-loop control," said White, who presented the team’s findings at the national meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, held Nov. 5-10 in Orlando, Fla. "A system of smart flaps coupled with a non-linear, adaptive-feedback control system could continually adjust the material properties – and therefore the position of the flaps – for optimum engine performance."
In addition to Loth and White, the UI research team includes aeronautical and astronautical engineering professor Philippe Geubelle and mechanical and industrial engineering professors Andrew Alleyne, Craig Dutton and Dan Tortorelli. Funding for this work was provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Materials provided by University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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