Exploration of a Reverse Turbo-Brayton Cryocooler for Carbon Neutral Aeronautical Applications: Integrated Cryocooler Design and Tank Modeling for Cryogenic Liquid Hydrogen in Long Range Flight

Climate change is a pressing issue. Hydrogen aircraft are an excellent alternative to current kerosene aircraft, and appear to be the most viable long-term solution for net-zero flight. One of the main challenges for hydrogen aircraft is to sustain a low boil-off rate. This research explores the solution of active cooling of the LH2 mixture in...

Conceptual Design and Performance Analysis of an Expander for the Recovery of Potential Energy Stored in Compressed Hydrogen

In the scope of global decarbonisation, hydrogen has been identified as an essential energy carrier. Not only as an energy storage solution for further electrification in vehicles but also as a primary fuel source in processes that rely on chemical energy which cannot be easily electrified. However, at ambient conditions, hydrogen is also a very...

Radial Turbine-Diffuser Interaction: Effect of Tip Gap

This document contains the final Master Thesis Report to obtain the Master of Science on Aerospace Engineering (Flight Performance &amp; Propulsion - Propulsion &amp; Power) at the Delft University of Technology.<br/><br/>The research work focuses on characterizing the interaction of a radial inlet turbine with a downstream diffuser through the...

Numerical Modelling of Gas Foil Journal Bearings: Analysis of High-Pressure Lubrication Flows

In the pursuit of reducing the climate impact of aviation, there has been an increased interest in the adoption of renewable energy technologies. Examples of revolutionary technologies include hydrogen fuel cell systems and waste heat recovery using the organic Rankine cycle. The design of viable energy conversion systems for aviation poses...

A multi-disciplinary design optimization framework with integrated structural transformation for highly loaded radial turbines

The use of CFD-based optimizations is becoming a standard for turbomachinery design. Although the use of such optimizations can lead to great improvements of the machine performances, there are still several shortcomings in the common design procedure of turbomachines. In fact, this entails the optimization of the component shape, and only a...

Multi-Point Fluid-Dynamic Shape Optimization for Turbomachinery

This work sets out the creation, verification and demonstration of an automated end-to-end tool for the multi-point fluid-dynamic optimization of turbomachinery. Taking into account multiple operating conditions during optimization aims to benefit the overall performance of turbomachines which are characterized by off-design operation and to...

Application of Energy Storage Technologies for Power Generation: Optimization of Steam Generation in a Grid-scale Power-to-Power Thermal Energy Storage

With variable renewable energy on the rise, large-scale energy storage is needed to assure grid stability. Thermal energy storage (TES) is a new player in the large-scale energy storage landscape, but might prove a cheap, safe and reliable option, with low permitting barriers. TES is not geographically limited, generally compact and has a low...

The design of an innovative hydrogen-oxygen power system based upon a solid oxide fuel cell and an advanced thermodynamic cycle

In the battle against climate change, humankind needs to develop alternative energy systems if it wants to survive on this planet. Fossil fuels, polluting the air with CO2, must make way for renewable sources so that climate change is put to a stop. Several new energy initiatives based on renewable sources are deployed worldwide, these however...

Data-driven boundary layer loss model for organic rankine cycle turbomachines

There is a requirement for localised efficient electricity generation systems that increase the efficiency of power plants and reduce wasted heat from other engineering applications such as cement manufacturing units and brick kilns. Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power systems use organic fluids and low-grade heat sources to accomplish this. Lack...

Best Practices for Adjoint-based Shape Optimization of Turbomachinery Stages

In the pursuit of a new ultra-efficient generation of turbomachines, novel and more sophisticated flow simulation and optimization methods have to be adopted. With the development of harmonic balance (HB) methods and adjoint optimization, questions arise on the concrete benefits of using one method over another. This research investigates the...

Machine-learnt design guidelines for axial vanes in Supersonic turbines operating with non-ideal compressible flows

The scientific community is consistently focused on identifying new sources of energy, which can reduce the consequences of climate change and depleting natural resources. Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) based power systems have been touted as one of the promising technologies of extracting thermal energy from waste-heat and renewable sources such...

Development of a design and sizing tool for conceptual turbofan engines

Increased public awareness and political concern about the environmental footprint of aviation have created very ambitious goals to reduce emissions in the future. This objective of this research project is to develop a multidisciplinary turbofan engine design and sizing tool for conceptual engine design. The tool will be used in a parametric...

Adjoint-based 3D Shape Optimization for Turbomachinery Applications

In order to reduce the carbon foot-print of turbo-generators to global warming, a step-change in the design process is needed. Extensive CFD simulations coupled with optimization algorithms are required, resorting to novel techniques to capture the complex flow phenomena occurring in the passage. However, the computation of the optimization...

Assessment of SU2 for radial compressor performance prediction

The open-source SU2 suite has been subject to extensive verification and validation studies in the past few years. Through such studies, the ability of the SU2 CFD solver to produce high-fidelity results for external flows has been substantiated by data from numerous testcases. Interest in applying the suite to turbomachinery flow analysis and...

Development of a Coupled Fluid-Structure Simulation Method in the Frequency Domain

In this work a numerical method is developed to efficiently simulate limit cycle oscillations and forced response amplitudes of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problems. The method computes a solution in the frequency-domain and can therefore only deal with periodic unsteadiness. As flow solver the Harmonic Balance method is used which is...