Introduction and contact info:
Name: Umberto Sandri
Work address: THT Lab – Via V. Emanuele 32, 50041 Calenzano – Firenze
email: umberto.sandri@unifi.it
PhD project:
Title: Experimental study of cooling solutions for PGC concepts
Short description: The combustion process occurring in PGC of CVC and RDC combustors induces heat loads which are critical for a structural stability of the combustor liners. This determines the necessity for active cooling solutions. The increase of pressure inside the combustor, objective of the PGC solutions, will prevent the chance to adopt the common film cooling concepts used in standard gas turbines. Film cooling is normally created by the injection of cold air provided by compressor discharge with the aim of creating a layer (film) of cold fluid along the combustor hot surface to protect against the hot gas: the negative pressure drop between cold air and hot gas prevents the use of this cooling strategy. Cooling schemes for PGC combustors must therefore be based on concepts exploiting forced convection processes on the cold side of combustor liners. The present project is closely connected to the project of ESR10. The two ESRs will select and design a set of cooling methods which must be suitable to be implemented in PGC combustors, considering as reference configurations the RDC engine available at TU Berlin and the CVC test rig installed at ENSMA. The design space available for possible cooling solutions will be extended by the use of additive manufacturing allowing to consider complex innovative geometries. ESR10 will do a numerical investigation of the performance while the present project will build low TRL test rigs, properly scaled using similitude consideration, capable of assessing the performances of the different cooling strategies selected. The thermal loads to be removed are obtained from experimental and CFD results previously produced by other ESRs involved in the investigations of TU Berlin and ENSMA test rigs. This first stage will support the corresponding CFD results and select the most promising configuration. After this stage, experiments will be repeated for the selected cooling method in its optimized configuration as predicted by the CFD results. This test rig will allow a characterization of the thermal performance of representative cooled parts and of the overall effectiveness of the cooling method.
Supervisors: Prof. Bruno Facchini, Prof. Antonio Andreini, Dr. Alessio Picchi
Mentor: Prof Myles Bohon
Planned secondments:
- Berlin Institute of Technology: 3 Months
- ISAE ENSMA, Poitiers: 2 Months
Background:
Bachelor's studies: Aerospace Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
Exchange program: 1 Semester, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), Medellin, Colombia
Master's studies: Mechanical Engineering, Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
Internship: ONERA, The French aerospace Lab, Toulouse, France
Thesis: Thermoelectric waste heat recovery in hybrid electric aircraft, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
Personal interests:
Gas Turbines, Heat Transfer, Cooling Strategies, Experimental Techniques, Combustion.
Research highlights:
The PhD starts the 1st of November. This Section will be regularly updated every 6 months.
