Modeling of the Cavity Response to Rapid Transient Considering the Effect of Heat Transfer

The internal air system, as one of the important subsystems of the aeroengine, is used to cooling and sealing, and plays a vital role in the safe operation of the engine. Especially in rapid transients, the complex dynamic response in air system may impose hazardous transition state loads on engine. Cavity is a component with pretty evident characteristics of transient in the air system due to the storage and release effects on the air. The flow and heat transfer characteristics of cavity should be made clear to precisely quantify the performance of the air system. The traditional study on cavity is based on the adiabatic assumption. However, the assumption is applicable to the transient of millisecond time scales physical phenomena in the air system, which is not usually common. Generally, the actual transition process is not instantaneous. Great discrepancies exist in the process of transition predicted by the adiabatic hypothesis compared with the practical process. The objective of this work is to propose a feasible method to solve the heat transfer issue throughout the transient process, which has not been settled by a proper method before, and develop a model for simulating the transient responses of the cavity with consideration of the heat transfer effect on the basis of the method. The model can predict transient responses under different thermal boundary conditions. Experiments have been developed for investigation of the charging process of the cavity. The thermal boundary can be controlled in the experiment, and the pressure and temperature responses of the cavity under different thermal boundary conditions have been analyzed. The non-dimensional numbers related to heat transfer characteristics were deduced by dimensional analysis, and the empirical formula of characteristics was proposed based on the experimental results. The non-adiabatic low-dimensional transient model of the cavity was established based on the heat transfer characteristics correlation. Results of transient responses calculated by non-adiabatic model were compared with the experimental data. It is found that both the transient responses of pressure and temperature agree well, with the maximum relative errors less than 2%. By comparison, the relative errors of pressure and temperature calculated by adiabatic model are about 8% and 12%, respectively. Meanwhile, the tendency of temperature response deviates from the actual process. Thus, the modeling method proposed is feasible and high-precision. The present work provides a technical method for establishing a low-dimensional model to describe the transient responses of the cavity with high accuracy, and supports the component-level modeling of the transient air system.