CFD Prediction and Calibration of Transient Aerodynamics Around an Auxiliary Power Unit Inlet Door

Abstract

Auxiliary power units (APUs) are gas turbine engines that provide high-pressure air and electrical power to aircraft systems. They provide primary power while the aircraft is parked on the ramp, starting services for the main engines, and backup power while the aircraft is in flight. Many APUs employ inlet systems which include a “pop-up” door that allow for the capture of freestream ram pressure during flight. This results in increased inlet recovery and a corresponding improvement in the performance of the APU. This APU door, when open, is exposed to airflow instability inherent in the aircraft boundary layer in the aft section of the fuselage, where APUs are typically housed. Additionally, the pop-up nature of the inlet door produces a large region of separated airflow off of the back side of the door. Systematic vortex shedding is frequently a major component of this separated region. As new APU doors are made with less rigid material to save weight, a need to better understand the unsteady aerodynamic excitations of the flow field around the door has arisen, as these new doors may be more susceptible to vibration during flight. Recent advances in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) meshing tools and transient modeling have enabled a CFD study to be performed which will investigate this time-dependent phenomenon. As transient CFD analysis is still a relatively new field for commercial CFD codes, a calibration was needed to verify the accuracy of the CFD predictions and to form any calibration correction terms. Honeywell Aerospace owns a Boeing 757 flight test vehicle which is normally used to flight test propulsion engines. However, this aircraft also includes a pop-up APU inlet door that is similar to most other APU inlet door styles. This APU door was instrumented using high response pressure transducers placed on the forward and aft sides of the inlet door as well as upstream of the door to measure upstream instability. The aircraft was flown at a variety of flight conditions and APU operating points and the transient data was recorded. After the completion of the flight test, a CFD model was constructed of the B757 flight test vehicle. Because aerodynamic instability can be generated anywhere on the aircraft, the entire airframe from nose to tail was modeled. The APU inlet door geometry was also created, meshed and added to the CFD model. This CFD model was run in a transient mode to simulate the exact same flight conditions and APU operating points as were tested during the flight test. Dynamic results in the time and frequency domains predicted by the CFD analyses were compared to flight test data and correlation and calibration factors were derived.