ILA Berlin, what to expect?

As a Dutchie, 27 April is a national holiday when we celebrate the birthday of our King, Willem-Alexander. A day of celebration throughout the complete country, but this year I will not be present. I will celebrate Willem-Alexander his birthday by spotting 200+ aircraft at the ILA Berlin Air Show. In this blog I will give a prospect about what I am going to witness at the airshow, in a following blog I will give a report about the visit.

The ILA (Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung) Berlin is a bi-annual airshow held at Berlin-Schönefeld airport. ILA Berlin is one of the largest airshows happening today and the location, the Berlin ExpoCenter Airport (at Schönefeld), houses five large halls which is the centre of networking for over 1000 exhibitors. Along these exhibitors are OEMs, suppliers and MRO-service companies in the field of civil and military aviation. The airshow features a static and flying exhibition displaying over 130 unique types featuring UAVs, (military) training aircraft, large airliners, historic aircraft, bizzjets and helicopters.  Next to aviation, aerospace technology will also be on display but will not be discussed in this article.

New aircraft on display at ILA

Airshows are perfect occasions for the aircraft manufacturers to display and demo new types. One of the aircraft I am most excited about is the Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion, the largest and heaviest helicopter under development for the US Military. It will be competing against the CH-47 Chinook for acquisition by the German Air Force of a replacement for the CH-53. The CH-53K features an aircraft which is powered by three 7500 shp GE38-1B turboshafts and could lift 12 tonnes externally. The CH-53K is promised to give a flight demo and I am exciting to see this humongous helicopter manoeuvre.

The F-35A will make an appearance at ILA 2018 as well. One year ago, at the Paris Air show, the F-35A gave its first areal capability demo. The F-35 is not been scheduled to flight yet, but I keep my hopes up to hear that F-135 engine roaring next week.

The Airbus A340 BLADE (Breakthrough Laminar Aircraft Demonstrator in Europe) will make its debut at the airshow. The A340 BLADE is a demonstrator with two outer transsonic laminar outer-wings, which could drastically decrease the wing friction which results in less fuel and thus fewer emissions, making aviation greener.

This year’s edition features an even bigger spectrum of UAV’s compared to past editions. UAVs as big as the European Male RPAS with a spanwidth of 25m and a MTOW of two tonnes or as small as the Black Hornet Minidrone which fits in your back pocket will be on display. The Zepyhr, Airbus’ solar powered aircraft which soars at 70000 ft and could provide an alternative to satellites.

What’s more?

Next to the newcomers, more civil and military aircraft will be displayed. The flying program offers quite a display from the German Air Force and a demo by the Spanish national display team: Patrulla Águila. The flight schedule features also slots for a ‘UAS exhibitor’ and the ‘ILA highlights’ but as of writing of this blog, no details were provided yet for these slots. At the static display, next to all the ‘state of the art’ aircraft, historic aircraft are displayed. One of my personal favourites, the Douglas DC-3, will be on static as well. For the military-aviation enthusiasts, the show provides enough: aircraft like the C-130J Hercules, NH-90, Eurofighter Typhoon, CV-22A Osprey, E-3A Sentry AWACS, Airbus A400M and many more are confirmed to be on display. For people who come to see big jets, the show provides as well: the Boeing 747-8 and the Airbus A380 shall provide a lot of shadow in the static display area. Overall, it promises to be a show worth visiting!

ILA: the numbers

Analyzing the aircraft list provides some interesting insights. To start with a 3.6 to 1 ratio of military market focused aircraft to civil market focused aircraft. The obvious reason is the wide range of mission types versus ‘conventional’ flying. From small drones to huge troop and cargo transporters, for almost every mission type, several types are offered at ILA.

Comparing all the aircraft categories, military combat- and training aircraft and helicopters/rotorcraft jump out. Within the helicopter/rotorcraft category, the focus is laid on the military market.For civil passenger aircraft, the huge orders usually take place at the Farnborough or the Paris airshow. Comparing the Paris airshow of last year, Boeing displayed the 787-10 and the 737-MAX 9 while Airbus displayed the A380 ‘plus’, the A350-1000 and the A321 neo. This year, Airbus will bring the A380 and A350-900 and Boeing will bring the 747-8 for the civil market.

Next article I will lay more focus on the upcoming technologies I have witnessed myself on the airshow next week. If you are visiting ILA, I hope I provided some more insight on the aircraft on display.

Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow - Aircraft engines, how do they work?

I started blogging with the aim to write technical articles in the field of Aviation. Next to opinion articles focused on readers with a certain background, my goal is to write educational articles. These articles will be focused on Aviation professionals, but with limited knowledge in other fields. I want to kick these articles off with one of my favourite subjects within Aviation Engineering: gas turbines, the power behind your flight.

Figure 1: A JT9D high-bypass turbofan on the 'City of Everett', the first produced Boeing 747 prototype

How does an gas turbine work: the essentials

As the title suggests, a simple way to explain the way a gas turbine works is ‘Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow’. Air is sucked in, squeezed, ‘blown-up’ and blown away. But how is this possible? Every gas turbine has three basis components: the compressor, the combustor and the turbine. Figure 2 shows the interaction between these three components. Air flows from left to right.

Figure 2: Schematic view of a basic gas turbine

Doing the unnatural: the compressor

The compressor works with the same principle as a bicycle pump: air is rapidly compressed. A bicycle tire is inflated up to pressures of around 6 bars, which is six times the pressure around you. Small gas turbines have similar compression ratios, but there is one difference: the compression of your tire is reached with a lot of (exhausting) pumps, which could take a while. The compression ratio of a gas turbine is reached within the blink of an eye and with a lot more air to compress.  Imagine pumping up your tire in a single stroke, and that is for a small gas turbines. One of the biggest engines currently flying, the GE90 that powers the Boeing 777, has an airflow of about 1400 kg/s. That is sucking in the air of a 100 square meters big hangar every second! The newest developed gas turbines have compression ratios reaching 60! To compare it with water pressure, this is the water pressure at about 600 meters depth. 

To achieve these high pressures, small aerofoils ‘cooperate’ to create a high pressure. Figure 3 shows how an (axial) compressor works: rows of alternating spinning and fixed aerofoils (rotors and stators) push the air through the narrowing compressor. The overall effect is high pressure air. Because air naturally moves from high pressures to low pressures (think about the daily weather forecast), the process within a compressor is very unnatural. For this fact, compressor design is one of the toughest parts within gas turbine design. 

Figure 3: An (axial) compressor

The compressor driver: the turbine

The compressor needs a lot of power to achieve the high compression ratio. This power is ‘harvested’ from the turbine. The principle of a turbine is exactly the opposite of the compressor: air moves from high pressure to a lower pressure and energy is used to drive the shaft which powers the compressor. The design of a turbine also consist of moving and static blades, but the blade design itself differ a bit (see Figure 4). The difference is because of the difference in temperature: while the compressor operates in temperature ranges of ambient temperature to 400/500 degrees Celsius, a turbine operates at temperatures around 1200/1300 degrees Celsius (or higher!). To protect the metal blades from melting away, the blades are forged from exotic metals, cooled internally and externally and coated with a ceramic coating.

Figure 4: A compressor blade (left) versus a turbine blade (right).

Where the magic happens: the combustor

A combination of a turbine and compressor could not operate on itself. Because of inefficiencies, extra input of energy is required to keep the compressor and turbine spinning. This is done by the combustion of fuel. This combustion is done with a very high efficiency with the aim to minimize the NO_x, SO_x and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions. The combustors of older gas turbines are less efficient which results in incomplete combustion (with by-products like soot and carbon monoxide), which clearly could be seen in Figure 6. 

Figure 5: A Boeing 707 in take-off

Future goals are set to repulse emissions by gas turbines and could be seen in Figure 5. The figure means that engines that are been developed by 2020 should emit 50% less carbon dioxide compared to engines developed in 2000. 

Figure 6: ACARE flight path for Europe. Image copyright of Arvind Gangoli Rao and Feijia Yin

Turbofan, Turbojet, Turbowhat?

Within (commercial) aviation, four ‘variants’ of gas turbine exist: turbojets, turbofans, turboprops and turboshafts. These could be divided in two categories: ‘using the power for thrust’ (turbojet & turbofan) and ‘using the power for torque’ (turboprop and turboshaft). Next to delivering power for thrust or lift, gas turbines drive the electric, hydraulic and pneumatic systems of aircraft.

In thrust we trust: the turbofan and turbojet

The turbofan (Figure 8) and turbojet (Figure 7) both rely on the same principle: generating ‘excess’ pressure in the exhaust to generate thrust. You could say that a turbofan is a turbojet with a huge fan mounted on front. The fan, because of the bypass, is more efficient than the turbojet and therefore is applied widely in the civil industry. Modern day turbofans are designed with bigger bypasses to enhance the efficiency.    

Figure 7: a turbojet schematic and the General Electric J85-GE-17A

For military application and in particular for fighter jets, turbofans with high bypass ratios are not useful. For most cases, a turbojet or a turbofan with a low bypass ratio is used. To enhance performance in some scenarios, an afterburner is used. An afterburner is basically a huge combustor mounted within the exhaust, so extra energy is added. With the right use of the exhaust, velocities above the speed of sound could be reached.

Figure 8: A turbofan schematic (left) and the CFM56-2

Small, but powerful: the turboshaft and turboprop

The principle of the turboprop (Figure 9) and turboshaft (Figure 10) is not to generate thrust, but to convert all the power that is generated into torque. The gas turbine is used as a ‘hot gas generator’. The energy from that gas is then extracted mostly by a power turbine: an extra turbine which is not coupled to a compressor but to a gearbox which powers a propeller or (helicopter) rotor. 

Figure 9: Turboprop schematic and the T56-15-LFE

The difference between a turboprop and turboshaft is that mostly one turboprop powers one propeller, but a helicopter rotor could be powered by more than one turboshaft. For instance, the AH-64 ‘Apache’ helicopter has two GE T700 turboshafts, which are both able to power the helicopter by itself. The extra gas turbine is installed to provide (extra) power for certain manoeuvres and for redundancy.

Figure 10: Turboshaft schematic and the T55-GA-714A

What’s else?

Gas Turbines are used for more purposes than described before. The same principle as turboprops and turboshaft could be used to drive anything other than a propeller or rotor. An Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) is a ‘mini’ gas turbine installed in the tail of most (civil) aircraft. The APU provides power for hydraulic, pneumatic and electric systems if the engines are not started yet. The high-pitched sound that could be heard at airports is coming from the APU. It could also be used if both engines fail in mid-flight to power the essential systems to keep the aircraft in control. A deviation from the turboprop is applied in the maritime field. For instance, Areal Commando Frigates use gas turbines for high speeds. Gas turbines are also used to generate high power current. Special gas turbines are designed for energy generation purposes and are enhanced with intercoolers, heat exchangers and are not limited in size. Most of the times a combined cycle is used: steam that is generated with exhaust gasses powers one or more steam turbines. This enhances the total efficiency of the power plant.

Figure 11: Three other major applications of gas turbines: the APU, maritime propulsion and energy generation

What’s next?

Because of environmental boundaries and the depletion of the oil reserves, within this century the aviation industry has to find other means of propulsion. This could be done by using other fuels, going hybrid or even fully electric. I will come back on this subject next month in a separate article on the short- and long term alternatives for gas turbines.

Figure 12: What's next? Image copyright of NASA

I hope I taught you a thing or two about the way gas turbines work. If any questions arise do not hesitate to comment below! Next two blogs I will focus on the ILA Berlin Air Show which I will visit on April 27^th. In two separate articles I will preview and review the air show, the aircraft and technologies displayed at the trade visitors’ event.