Experimental investigation of the performance of a loop heat pipe-based cooling system under ultra-high dypass ratio turbojet engine conditions

Pavlo Gakal, Igor Rybalchenko, Oleksii Tretyak, Viacheslav Nazarenko

Abstract


The subject of this article is the heat transfer processes in a loop heat pipe (LHP) to solve the problem of maintaining the temperature regime of the valves of the air-bleeding system of an aircraft engine. The goal was to experimentally substantiate the operability and efficiency of a cooling system based on LHP for the temperature conditions of a perspective aircraft engine with an ultra-high bypass ratio. The task to be solved: to create a test bench for studying heat transfer processes in cooling systems based on LHP. The test bench should reproduce the temperature of the aircraft engine and the orientation of the LHP in the gravitational field. To investigate the operability of the cooling system under different heat loads, heat sink temperatures, orientation in the gravitational field, and additional thermal insulation. The methods used are: experimental approach, test planning, and statistical methods for processing experimental results. The following results were obtained. A test bench was created to investigate the heat transfer processes in a cooling system based on LHP. Toluene is used as a LHP’s coolant. The temperature conditions of the perspective aircraft engine were considered when creating the test bench. The performance of the cooling system was studied under different orientations of the gravitational field, heat sink temperature, and heat load. The obtained experimental results allowed us to analyze the influence of the orientation in the gravitational field, heat sink temperature, and additional vacuum thermal insulation of the evaporator and liquid line on the LHP performance and efficiency. Conclusions. The novelty of the results obtained is as follows: for the first time, the possibility of using a cooling system based on the LHP in temperature conditions of the perspective aircraft engine with an ultra-high bypass ratio was experimentally approved; it was proven that the LHP with toluene as part of the cooling system can effectively operate stably, without pulsations and without overheating of the cooled devices under different heat loads, heat sink temperatures, and orientation in the gravitational field.

Keywords


cooling system; loop heat pipe; heat transfer; turbojet engine with ultra-high bypass ratio; fuel consumption

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.32620/aktt.2025.1.02