Study of Compressor Erosion in Helicopter Engine with Inlet Separator

摘要

Performance of aircraft engines, operating in areas where the atmosphere is polluted by small solid particles, can suffer due to blade surface erosion. Erosion damage can lead to significant reduction in engine efficiency as well as performance, due to the change in blade surfaces, tip leakages and blade pressure distribution. This report presents the results of an investigation of the solid particle dynamics and the resulting blade erosion through a helicopter engine with inlet particle separator. Particle trajectories are computed in the inlet separator which is characterized by considerable hub and tip contouring and radial variation in the swirling vane shape. The nonseparated particle trajectories are determined through the deswirling vanes and the five stage axial and one stage radial compressors. Impact data for a very large number of ingested particles is used to calculate the resulting blade surface erosion. The erosion pattern indicates the location of maximum blade erosion. In addition, the distribution of particle impact data (which is pertinent to erosion such as the impact velocities, impact angles and in particular, the frequency of particle impacts) is presented to suggest possible procedure to reduce the erosion in the critically affected blade areas. Keywords: Compressor aerodynamics, Compressor blades, Ingestion(Engines), and Particulate flow trajectory calculations.