Design and Analysis of an Aircraft Thermal Management System Linked to a Low-Bypass Ratio Turbofan Engine

Abstract

The design of an aircraft thermal management system (TMS) that is capable of rejecting heat loads into the bypass stream of a typical low-bypass ratio turbofan engine, or a ram-air stream, is investigated. The TMS consists of an air cycle system (ACS), which is similar to the typical air cycle machines (ACMs) used on current aircraft, both military and commercial. This system turbocharges compressor bleed air and uses heat exchangers in a ram air stream or the engine bypass stream to cool the engine bleed air prior to expanding it to low temperatures suitable for heat rejection. In this study, a simple low-bypass ratio afterburning turbofan engine was modeled in NPSS to provide boundary conditions to the TMS system throughout the flight envelope of a typical military fighter aircraft. The engine was sized to produce sea level static (SLS) thrust roughly equivalent to that of an F-35-class engine. Two different variations of the TMS system, a ram air cooled and a bypass air cooled, were sized to handle a given demanded aircraft heat load, which might include environmental control system (ECS) loads, avionics cooling loads, weapons system loads, or other miscellaneous loads. The architecture and modeling of the TMS is described in detail, and the ability of the sized TMS to reject these demanded aircraft loads throughout several key off-design points was analyzed, along with the impact of ACS engine bleeds on engine thrust and fuel consumption. A comparison is made between the cooling capabilities of the ram-air stream versus the engine bypass stream, along with the benefits and drawbacks of each cooling stream. It is observed that the maximum load dissipation capability of the TMS is tied directly to the amount of engine bleed flow, while the level of bleed flow required is set by the temperature conditions imposed by the aircraft cooling system and the heat transfer fluid used in the ACS thermal transport bus. Furthermore, the higher bypass stream temperatures significantly limit the thermodynamic viability and capability of a TMS designed with bypass air as the ultimate heat sink. The results demonstrate the advantage that adaptive, variable cycle engines (VCEs) may have for future military aircraft designs, as they combine the best features of the two TMS architectures that were studied here.