LES of the Flow and Particle Ingestion Into an Air Intake of a Jet Engine Running on the Ground

Abstract

The flow field generated by the flow into a jet engine air-intake, with near ground effects, is considered. The axial inflow in the neighborhood of the ground generates a system of unsteady vortices. Some of these vortices extend from the air-intake towards the ground. Some of these vortices are strong enough to dislocate and even lift small objects from the ground up to the air-intake. The dynamics of the vortex system makes it difficult to study the problem by standard numerical and experimental methods. The dynamics of the vortices can be captured by using Large Eddy Simulations (LES), which is used here to enhance the understanding of the dynamics of the flow field. The computed flow field is used also to assess the ingestion of particles into the air-intake. It is shown that particles of several mm sizes can be ingested into the jet engine. This in turn may result in enhanced erosion of the compressor blades. The results of the computations in terms of mean velocity field have been compared to experimental data. These results are in good agreement with the experiments.