A versatile volume-based modeling technique of distributed local quadratic convergence for aeroengines

Abstract

For advanced aero-engine design and research, modeling and simulation in a digital environment is indispensable, especially for engines of complicated configurations, such as variable cycle engines (VCE) and adaptive cycle engines (ACE). Also, in the research of future smart engines, reliable real-time digital twins are paramount. However, the 2 dominant methods that used in solving the simulation models, Newton-Raphson (N-R) method and volume-based method, are not fully qualified for the study requirements, because neither of them reaches the satisfactory balance of convergence rate and calculating efficiency. In this study, by deeply analyzing the mathematical principle of these 2 methods, a novel modeling and solving method for aero-engine simulation, which integrates the advantages of both N-R and volume-based methods, is established. It has distributed architecture and local quadratic convergence rate. And a novel modeling method for variable area bypass injectors (VABI) is put forward. These facilitate simulation of various configurations of aero-engines. The modeling cases, including a high bypass-ratio (BPR) turbofan and an ACE, illustrate that the novel technique decreases the iterations by about two-thirds comparing with volume-based method, while the success rate of convergence remains over 99%. This proves its superiority in both convergence and calculating efficiency over the conventional ones. This technique can be used in advanced gas turbine engine design and control strategy optimization, and study of digital twins.

Keywords

• Aero-engine performance simulation
• Variable cycle engine
• Variable area bypass injector
• Digital twin
• Newton-Raphson method