Overview
For decades, most of the aviation research activities have been focused on the reduction of noise and NOx and CO2 emissions. However, emissions from aircraft gas turbine engines of non-volatile PM, consisting primarily of soot particles, are of international concern today. Despite the lack of knowledge toward soot formation processes and characterization in terms of mass and size, engine manufacturers have now to deal with both gas and particles emissions. Furthermore, heat transfer understanding, that is also influenced by soot radiation, is an important matter for the improvement of the combustor’s durability, as the key point when dealing with low-emissions combustor architectures is to adjust the air flow split between the injection system and the combustor’s walls. The SOPRANO initiative consequently aims at providing new elements of knowledge, analysis and improved design tools, opening the way to:
- Alternative designs of combustion systems for future aircrafts that will enter into service after 2025 capable of simultaneously reducing gaseous pollutants and particles,
- Improved liner lifetime assessment methods.
Therefore, the SOPRANO project will deliver more accurate experimental and numerical methodologies for predicting the soot emissions in academic or semi-technical combustion systems. This will contribute to enhance the comprehension of soot particles formation and their impact on heat transfer through radiation. In parallel, the durability of cooling liner materials, related to the walls air flow rate, will be addressed by heat transfer measurements and predictions. Finally, the expected contribution of SOPRANO is to apply these developments in order to determine the main promising concepts, in the framework of current low-NOx technologies, able to control the emitted soot particles in terms of mass and size over a large range of operating conditions without compromising combustor’s liner durability and performance toward NOx emissions.