Evaluation and analysis of evaporation cooling on thermodynamic and pressure characteristics of intake air in a precooled turbine engine

The precooled turbine engine is applied to overcome the limitation of Mach number due to high temperature inlet air. This paper aims to investigate the effect of water injection cooling on the high-temperature intake air. Then, the theory evaluation and Eulerian-Lagrangian multiphase flow method are conducted to explore the thermodynamic process and resistance characteristics of the pre-cooling section built-in even spray apparatus with a drag reduction. Results show that larger amount of the injection flow rate at higher Mach number will deteriorate total pressure loss and flow field uniformity. Evaporation cooling can decrease flow loss by 9.4%–60.7%. Within 27 ms, total-temperature drop is in 14–144 K range with a low total-pressure drop coefficient of 0.56%–1.29%. Especially, mass flow will increase by 1.15%–18.50%. Thus, water injection cooling is conducive to a higher acceleration, as well as for improving the thermodynamics characteristics of inlet air for a turbine engine at a high Mach number.