Improved tools for the prediction of combustion inside gas turbines

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MTU Aero Engines is Germany's leading aircraft engine manufacturer and an established global player in the industry. The company engages in the design, development, manufacture, marketing and support of commercial and military aircraft engines in all thrust and power categories and stationary gas turbines. MTU Maintenance Canada is the North American member of the MTU Maintenance network of companies, which represents the largest provider of independent commercial airplane engine services worldwide. In order to maintain and improve their level of competence in combustion technology MTU Maintenance Canada and MTU Aero Engines want to support financially the research of Prof. W. Kendal Bushe and his students and to offer their expertise and advise throughout the process. Mostly the expertise in combustion research resides with MTU Munich, but there have been recent efforts to transfer part of that knowledge into Canada. With upcoming new maintenance contracts for MTU Canada has the ambition to develop and implement new and innovative repair methods for various aero engine components. This will enable a sustainable maintenance strategy for the years to come. To understand and evaluate the effects of the high temperatures in and near the combustion chamber, the improvement of qualitative and quantitative predictions using combustion simulation is essential. The research group under Dr. Bushe offers the expertise in demand and an innovative alternative methodology, the Conditional Source-term Estimation (CSE) combustion model, which uses significantly less computational resources than other methods. Further, Dr. Bushe and his PhD student, Graham Hendra, have proposed a new, closely related model which they are naming the Uniform Conditional State model; this new approach will allow for more flexibility with respect to the way combustion chemistry is modelled, which should allow for incorporating arbitrarily complex chemical kinetic mechanisms, such that combustion of a much wider range of fuels can be simulated. These approaches will provide a tool which will enable MTU to develop new, sustainable maintenance strategies.