Design Feasibility of Annular Target Thrust Reversers

Abstract

Concerns for ecological aviation products and the objective of reducing pollutants to meet ACARE (Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe) targets address, among other initiatives, the necessity of reducing the overall weight of the aircraft. One way of dealing with the problem of aircraft weight is by investigating thrust reversers. Reducing the reverser weight will have favourable effects on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. This paper discusses the target type thrust reverser concept. This concept was proposed by NASA and has a potential of reducing the reverser weight on future high bypass ratio turbofan engines. A feasibility study of the annular target thrust reverser in terms of engine performance and reverse thrust achieved was carried out. It comprises 2D CFD analyses of the thrust reverser and the effect of the reverser on the engine performance for different deflector configurations. The turbofan engine chosen for this study is CUTS_TF (Cranfield University Twin Spool Turbo Fan) which is similar to the GE90-85B and the information available in the public domain [1] [2] is used for the engine performance analysis along with the gas turbine performance software, GasTurb 10 [3]. CFD analyses were performed using the FLUENT software [4] to investigate the thrust reverser flow dynamics at landing at maximum reverse thrust.