• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.195-201
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• 2008

In the jet engines on the aircrafts cruising at high altitude over 20 km and subsonic speed, the Reynolds number in terms of the compressor blades becomes very low. In such an operating condition with low Reynolds number, it is widely reported that total pressure loss of the air flow through the compressor cascades increases dramatically due to separation of the boundary layer and the secondary-flow. But the detail of flow mechanisms causes the total pressure loss has not been fully understood yet. In the present study, two series of numerical investigations were conducted to study the effects of Reynolds number on the aerodynamic characteristics of compressor cascades. At first, the incompressible flow fields in the two-dimensional compressor cascade composed of C4 airfoils were numerically simulated with various values of Reynolds number. Compared with the corresponding experimental data, the numerically estimated trend of total pressure loss as a function of Reynolds number showed good agreement with that of experiment. From the visualized numerical results, the thickness of boundary layer and wake were found to increase with the decrease of Reynolds number. Especially at very low Reynolds number, the separation of boundary layer and vortex shedding were observed. The other series, as the preparatory investigation, the flow fields in the transonic compressor, NASA Rotor 37, were simulated under the several conditions, which corresponded to the operation at sea level static and at 10 km of altitude with low density and temperature. It was found that, in the case of operation at high altitude, the separation region on the blade surface became lager, and that the radial and reverse flow around the trailing edge become stronger than those under sea level static condition.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.445-454
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• 2022

Ice accretion on the aircraft components, such as wings, fuselage, and empennage, can occur when the aircraft encounters a cloud zone with high humidity and low temperature. The prevention of ice accretion is important because it causes a decrease in the aerodynamic performance and flight stability, thus leading to fatal safety problems. In this study, a shape design optimization of a multi-element airfoil is performed to minimize the amount of ice accretion on the high-lift device including leading-edge slat, main element, and trailing-edge flap. The design optimization framework proposed in this paper consists of four major parts: air flow, droplet impingement and ice accretion simulations and gradient-free optimization algorithm. Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation is used to predict the aerodynamic performance and flow field around the multi-element airfoil at the angle of attack 8°. Droplet impingement and ice accretion simulations are conducted using the multi-physics computational analysis tool. The objective function is to minimize the total mass of ice accretion and the design variables are the deflection angle, gap, and overhang of the flap and slat. Kriging surrogate model is used to construct the response surface, providing rapid approximations of time-consuming function evaluation, and genetic algorithm is employed to find the optimal solution. As a result of optimization, the total mass of ice accretion on the optimized multielement airfoil is reduced by about 8% compared to the baseline configuration.