Transient Heat Load Management for Future Advanced Aircrafts
- Academic lead
- Duncan Borman (Civil Engineering)
- Industrial lead
- Steve Smith (BAE Systems Warton) and Evaldas Greiciunas (EG Fluids LTD)
- Co-supervisor(s)
- Alan Burns (Chemical and Process Engineering), Jon Summers (Mechanical Engineering), Amir Khan (Civil Engineering)
- Project themes
- Energy and Transport
Future advanced military aircraft engineers face an appreciable technical challenge to design Thermal Management System (TMS) of adequate capacity within the available space. Heat Exchangers (HE) of TMS are the largest components and are designed to meet the maximum heat duty, experienced only during a fraction of flight cycle and resulting in over-sized system for the majority of the flight. Phenomenon of phase-change is seen as a possible technology which could be used in reducing the size of the TMS. It would be used to store the transient heat loads at constant temperature of phase change which would then be rejected under less strenuous conditions.
This research will investigate and evaluate novel transient heat storage technologies through Phase Change Material (PCM) Heat Exchanger (HE) design or micro-encapsulations of phase-change materials within the working fluid for advanced aircraft TMS. It will build on and extend the previous and existing Leeds CDT doctorate and MSc projects on similar topics.
The project is sponsored by BAE Systems who will provide expertise and support including access to their advanced manufacture facilities that may be used to produce and test proof-of-concept demonstrators.