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Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (4): 130897.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2024.30897

• Fluid Mechanics and Flight Mechanics • Previous Articles    

Performance analysis and optimization of fuel thermal management system with expendable heat sink

Shiyu YANG, Haiyu YU, Yuanfang LIN, Xingang LIANG()   

  1. School of Aerospace Engineering,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China
  • Received:2024-07-02 Revised:2024-07-25 Accepted:2024-09-23 Online:2024-10-12 Published:2024-09-29
  • Contact: Xingang LIANG E-mail:liangxg@tsinghua.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Science and Technology Major Project of China (2019-Ⅲ-0001-0044)

Abstract:

To investigate the performance of a Fuel Thermal Management System (FTMS) with expendable heat sink under multiple temperature limit points, and to extend the system’s longest normally working time (thermal endurance) by optimizing the utilization of expendable heat sink, a simulation flow path using Liquid Methane (LM) as the expendable heat sink was constructed. Initially, the characteristics of hot fuel return were analyzed. The results indicate that the fuel heat sink consumption rate increases with increasing supply pump flow rate during normal operations. When the ram air is insufficient, the fuel return temperature to the fuel tank becomes the main limit temperature of the FTMS, and to meet the temperature requirement of hot fuel return, the system optimal supply pump flow rate is too high, resulting in a poor heat dissipation performance. In this case, the use of LM can not only cool the hot fuel return, but also further reduce the fuel heat sink consumption by reducing the optimal supply pump flow rate. Subsequently, the effect of the Middle Fuel Return Branch (MFRB) on system heat dissipation performance was explored. The results show that once the ram air is insufficient, the MFRB can not only increase the heat dissipation through combustion fuel, but also further enhance the system heat dissipation capability by decreasing the optimal supply pump flow rate as well. The fuel heat sink consumption rate under the standard condition without LM can be reduced by 17.62% in the new flow path. Next, the characteristics of LM supply flow were analyzed. The results demonstrate that the LM supply flow rate can be divided into the high efficiency, general, and low efficiency zones for LM according to the effect of using LM. Finally, a new dynamic supply strategy of LM was proposed. Under the standard condition, the thermal endurance can be improved by 9.21% and 27.44% compared to the constant low flow and high flow LM supply strategies, respectively.

Key words: thermal management system, heat sink, dynamic optimization, thermal endurance, fuel

CLC Number: