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GE and NASA To Begin Wind-Tunnel Testing This Summer of Open Rotor Jet Engine Systems

Written by thomas · Filed Under Aeronautics News 

June 11, 2009

thomas

openrotor

openrotorairfoilstestrig2

EVENDALE, Ohio – June 11, 2009 – Following several months refurbishing
a special NASA test rig, GE Aviation and NASA this summer will begin a
wind-tunnel test program to evaluate counterrotating fan-blade systems
for “open rotor” jet engine designs.

The testing will be conducted throughout 2009 and early 2010 at wind
tunnel facilities at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
This is not a full engine test, but a component rig test to evaluate
subscale fan systems using GE’s and NASA’s advanced computational
tools and data acquisition systems.

In the 1980s, GE successfully ground-tested and flew an open-rotor jet
engine that demonstrated fuel savings of more than 30 percent compared
with similar-sized, jet engines with conventional, ducted front fan
systems.  Since then, GE has dramatically advanced its computational
aero-acoustic analysis tools to better understand and improve
open-rotor systems.

“The tests mark a new journey for GE and NASA in the world of open
rotor technology,” said David Joyce, president of GE Aviation.  “These
tests will help to tell us how confident we are in meeting the
technical challenges of an open-rotor architecture.  It’s a journey
driven by a need to sharply reduce fuel consumption in future
aircraft.”

GE and the Fundamental Aeronautics Program of NASA’s Aeronautics
Research Mission Directorate in Washington are jointly funding the
program.  Snecma (SAFRAN Group) of France, GE’s longtime 50/50 partner
in CFM International, a highly successful joint company, will
participate with fan blade designs.

For the NASA tests, GE will run two rows of counterrotating fan
blades, with 12 blades in the front row and 10 blades in the back row.
The composite fan blades are 1/5 subscale in size.  They will be
tested in simulated flight conditions in Glenn’s low-speed wind tunnel
to simulate low-altitude aircraft speeds for acoustic evaluation, and
also in Glenn’s high-speed wind tunnel to simulate high-altitude
cruise conditions in order to evaluate blade efficiency and
performance.

Engine noise is a prime challenge in operating open-rotor engines in a
commercial aviation environment.

NASA’s test rig, now refurbished and modernized, was actually used in
the 1980s when NASA and GE first tested scale-model, counterrotating
fan systems that led to the development of the open rotor GE36 engine.
***

The first wind-tunnel tests this summer will essentially reenact those
1980s tests.  GE and NASA will first run blades of the same design
that led to the original GE36 jet engine.  This will establish
critically important baseline data for GE for flight test correlation
because the GE36 in the 1980s flew on Boeing 727 and MD-80 aircraft.

As new and more exotic fan blade designs are run in the wind tunnel,
GE and NASA will be able to assess comprehensive aero and acoustic
design space in order to better understand how these designs will
perform in an actual operating environment.

In total, GE and NASA will run six different sets of blades in the
NASA wind tunnels, including five sets of modern blade designs.   GE
designed and fabricated the scale-model blades at its Cincinnati
facility using technical input provided by the GE Corporate Research
Center in New York.

Open-rotor jet engine designs are among the longer-term technologies
being evaluated for LEAP-X, CFM International’s (GE/Snecma) technology
program focusing on future advances for next-generation CFM56 engines.

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