Abstract

The study of the flow in an aero-engine intake is very important to achieve its highest possible performance and, consequently, the highest performance of the whole engine. The “ground vortex” is a phenomenon introduced to the aero-engine intake, yet it is difficult to study. The difficulty is due to the nearby stationary environment, namely the ground when the aircraft is parking while in maintenance or passenger embarking. A 3-D full-scale computational model was used to simulate the air-flow in a typical high bypass ratio turbofan, namely, General Electric  GE CF6-50 engine. A computational study was carried out using the commercial code “CFD-RC” (recently, “ESI-CFD”). The computational code was validated by comparison with previous works. A vortex map was numerically drawn with the ground vortex unsteadily simulated. A correlation was derived for the vortex formation line. The objective of the present paper is to get a suitable correlation to calculate the optimum clearance distance between the engine and the ground. This correlation will be very important the manufacturing companies of aircraft.

Keywords

engine, computational, validated, comparison, vortex, correlation, ground, aircraft, ratio, parking, evolution, turbofan, humid, passenger, jets