Intake Engine Interactions of a Modern Large Turbofan Engine

Abstract

An engine experiment has been carried out to investigate Fan Stability and response to ambient wind conditions during static high power running of a modern large turbofan engine. This paper describes the experiment and the conclusions. Intermittently the inlet would separate and drive the fan into stall from which it did not recover when the inlet cleared up: on high working lines one inlet separation could stall the fan; on lower working lines the inlet separation / fan flow / bypass duct pressure would develop a divergent 10Hz oscillation which could eventually stall the fan. The interaction of the stalled fan with the turbine and mixed nozzle would then raise the fan running line above the stall dropout level thus locking the fan into stall even when the inlet cleared up. A one dimensional dynamic model of the engine was created that would exhibit similar behaviour to the engine when a delay was introduced between the inlet loss and fan face loss. The engine never showed steady operation with the inlet separated.