A supercomputer called "Sierra" at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories that previously cranked numbers to support Big Bang Theory and carbon research will soon helo GE better understand fuel injectors for turbofan engines.
In a new GE Report, the company describes how a computational combustion engineer from GE Global Research and a team of researchers from Arizona State University and Cornell University will in the next few weeks begin running computations with Sierra to devine the details of how fuel flows through an injector. How fuel squirts out of an injector is shown below, courtesy of a GE simulation.
"Fuel injectors sport an intricate design and geometry, work in extreme heat, and must handle punishing pressures," says GE. "They've been notoriously difficult to test and build."
Why use Sierra? GE says high fidelity computer simulations can "significantly reduce the number of trials and can provide insights into why a fuel injector behaves the way it does."
"Understanding how air and fuel burn will help us to ultimately build more powerful engines that consume less fuel and have lower emissions," says GE.
No word on whether the research is directly targetted at GE's GE9X engine work for the Boeing 777X. GE9X, as previously reported by Flightblogger, is said to be a 90,000- to 100,000lb-thrust class engine that will contribute a 10% improvement in fuel burn for the 777-8X/-9X family.
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