Data-driven Analysis of Relight variability of Jet Fuels induced by Turbulence

TL;DR

This study investigates how turbulence affects the variability in relight success of Jet-A and C1 aircraft fuels, revealing different dominant factors and variability levels for each fuel through detailed simulations and analysis.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of turbulence-induced relight variability for two aircraft fuels using simulation and discriminant analysis, highlighting distinct ignition failure mechanisms.

Findings

Jet-A ignition influenced by fuel entrainment

C1 more sensitive to small-scale turbulence

C1 exhibits greater variability and extreme ignition events

Abstract

For safety purposes, reliable reignition of aircraft engines in the event of flame blow-out is a critical requirement. Typically, an external ignition source in the form of a spark is used to achieve a stable flame in the combustor. However, such forced turbulent ignition may not always successfully relight the combustor, mainly because the state of the combustor cannot be precisely determined. Uncertainty in the turbulent flow inside the combustor, inflow conditions, and spark discharge characteristics can lead to variability in sparking outcomes even for nominally identical operating conditions. Prior studies have shown that of all the uncertain parameters, turbulence is often dominant and can drastically alter ignition behavior. For instance, even when different fuels have similar ignition delay times, their ignition behavior in practical systems can be completely different. In practical operating conditions, it is challenging to understand why ignition fails and how much variation in outcomes can be expected. The focus of this work is to understand relight variability induced by turbulence for two different aircraft fuels, namely Jet-A and a variant named C1. A detailed, previously developed simulation approach is used to generate a large number of successful and failed ignition events. Using this data, the cause of misfire is evaluated based on a discriminant analysis that delineates the difference between turbulent initial conditions that lead to ignition or failure. It was determined that the cause of ignition failure is different for the two fuels. While it was found that Jet-A is influenced by fuel entrainment, C1 was found to be more sensitive to small scale turbulence features. A larger variability is found in the ignition modes of C1, which can be subject to extreme events induced by kernel breakdown.