UC Irvine

The intake of fine particles such as volcanic ash and sand into gas turbine engines is detrimental in several ways, such as prompting premature wear of turbine blades from surface erosion and corrosion; causing deposits to melt on blades and vanes; and creating material build up in engines. To aid the development of commercial real-time sensors designed to monitor particle ingestion (e.g., particle size, particle concentration, and species composition), a high-velocity particle-laden environment is developed to simulate engine inlet conditions using polydisperse non-spherical reference particles. The environment is then used to perform an experimental investigation to characterize particle sizes across the rig profile for various flow velocities and particle loads, using two laser-diffraction systems. Design of Experiments is used to develop a test plan and statistically resolve the data. The rig produces repeatable flows simulating particle-laden engine inlet conditions with fluid velocities between 100 m/s – 200 m/s and Reynolds numbers of 1.74 x 105 – 3.48 x 105, for polydisperse reference particles of 0.25 μm – 178 μm and particle Reynolds numbers of 4.4 – 2700, injected into flows at 0.5 g/s – 1.67 g/s, equivalent to loadings of Ф = 3.5 x 10-3 – Ф = 27 x 10-3. In the rig developed, probes can be evaluated for the entire particle size range of the reference particles, at engine inlet conditions. Design of Experiments models can be used to appropriately position probes to validate sizing performance. The test rig is, therefore, deemed suitable for guiding the development of commercial particle ingestion monitoring sensors.