ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MD — A team of Army and academic researchers reviewed a decade’s worth of studies examining fundamental physics in order to improve aircraft engine performance under extreme conditions.
Military aircraft operate in demanding environments, such as sand, dust clouds, runway debris, and even volcanic ash. Microparticles from these hazards can wreak havoc on gas turbine engines.
Researchers from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory, teamed up with colleagues from the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Cincinnati, and the Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, to look at the literature with a critical new eye. Their peer-reviewed work is published in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Applied Mechanics Review, “A Critical Review of Physical Models in High Temperature Multiphase Fluid Dynamics: Turbulent Transport and Particle-Wall Interactions.”