Optimised Cockpit Heat Load Analysis using Skin Temperature Predicted by CFD and Validation by Thermal Mapping to Improve the Performance of Fighter Aircraft

摘要

Designing of optimum environmental control system (ECS) plays a major role for increasing performance of lighter aircraft depending upon requirement of engine bleed air for running of ECS. Accurate estimation of cockpit skin temperature for obtaining optimised cockpit heat load helps in estimation of engine bleed air for ECS. Present research evolved a methodology for comparing the theoretically calculated skin temperature with computational fluid dynamics (CH)) analysis to obtain optimum skin temperature. Results are validated by flight tests under critical flight conditions using thermal crayons. Based on which the optimized heat load and bleed air requirements has been computed. Uncertainty analysis of skin temperature measurement for thermal crayons have been undertaken. The results indicate that the theoretical skin temperature is -26.70 per cent as that of CFD estimated skin temperature. Optimized average cockpit heat load at critical flight profiles is 0.74 times the theoretical cockpit heat load, leading to reduction of bleed air requirement by 26 per cent as compared to theoretical. Due to this literature survey has pridicted the increase in performance parameters like increase in bleed air pressure by 78 per cent, increase in thrust by 60 per cent, and decrease in specific fuel consumption (SFC) by 40 per cent to improve the endurance of aircraft. The research has generated governing equations for variation of cockpit heat loads w.r.t aircraft skin temperatures.