Design and optimization of dry powder jet cleaning nozzles for airport navigation lights

Abstract

The research of this work is based on the nozzle design and optimization of dry powder (NaHCO3) jet cleaning system for airport navigation aid lamps. In this cleaning system, compressed air drives dry powder (NaHCO3) abrasive, and a gas-solid mixed high-speed jet is sprayed onto the surface of the luminaire through the nozzle to scour and clean the dirt attached to the surface of the luminaire. Based on the computational fluid dynamics and flow field theory, three types of nozzle structures, namely tapered nozzle, Laval nozzle, and flat nozzle, were studied; the DPM (Deformable part model) model in Fluent was used to analyze the internal and external flow fields of the nozzle mixed with the gas-solid two-phase flow to obtain the velocity field, pressure field and nozzle wear rate of the mixed gas, and the flat nozzle was selected and the nozzle parameters were optimized. The optimized level combination of flat type nozzle structure is obtained with a flat width of 4mm, flat height of 24.5mm, and flat length of 55mm.