Meyers, Bronwyn CGrobler, Jan-Hendrik2025-10-312025-10-312019http://hdl.handle.net/10204/14462A combustor was designed for a 200N micro-gas turbine for the Model aircraft industry using the NREC design method. During the design process, there are various aspects where there are no definitive methodologies for specifying the design detail, such as the design of the hole-sets, and multiple options can be derived that can satisfy the required mass flow split and pressure drop for a particular hole-set. For this study, the various solutions for hole-set configurations were tested using CFD before experimental development will be pursued. The three design parameters tested were 1) annular area split configuration, 2) Hole area splits and 3) Relative hole positions. CFD simulations for a chosen 9 designs were run and the data were processed, analysed and interpreted. Some of the results such as mass flow splits and pressure drop are already quantitative in nature, however, the evaluation of the quality of the recirculation zone, mixing and outlet plane flow are of a more qualitative nature. In order to apply a more quantitative method for choosing a preferable design, a scoring system was devised in order to apply a quantitative value to the aspects of the flow which are initially analysed subjectively. The evaluation was broken up into the relevant aspects/features, namely, Recirculation zone (Rz), Outlet and Mixing. For each feature, the designs were subjectively evaluated relative to each other and given a rating/score. The scoring methodology for ranking combustors proved to be an effective method for evaluating the large mass of data that is generated using CFD and allowed for the use of this data to inform choices when narrowing down the mass of combustor designs that are generated in the preliminary design phase.FulltextenCombustorComputational Fluid DynamicsModel aircraft industriesModel aircraft industriesNREC design methodConference PresentationN/A