Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering

Abstract—This paper presents the details of development of an efficient interactive design tool for aircraft engine sand separator systems. The development of such a tool was felt necessary to address the problem of sand ingestion in gas turbine engines; a vital concern for the aviation and gas-turbine based electricity generation industry communities operating in desert environments as it can seriously affect the operation, performance and life cycle of a turbine engine. The design tool makes use of state-of-the-art practical geometry design and analysis technique, namely the inverse airfoil design method for the design of specific profiles for engine air intakes. The sand separator design is achieved by giving a specific contour to the intake profile, such as a highly curved bend in the duct, so that the contaminants because of their inertial momentum are forced away from the central flow. Since the sand particles can rebound of the air intake walls and enter the engine, the method takes into account sand particle rebound or restitution characteristics in the design. The design is accomplished with the aid of optimization techniques in both the inverse aerodynamic design as well as in the sand separator system design. In addition, to facilitate the analysis and design in an interactive manner, a MATLAB GUI has been developed. Details of the analysis and design tool are presented along with simple but practical design examples to demonstrate the usefulness and utility of the method and the interactive tool Index Terms—Sand ingestion, inertial particle separator, inverse airfoil design, potential flow, sand particle trajectory I