The Whittle Laboratory [1] works on reducing the climate impact of aircraft and power generation. It is located at the West Cambridge site in Cambridge, UK. It is a part of the Department of Engineering, at the University of Cambridge. The Whittle Lab has its origins in Sir Frank Whittle and a number of his original team, from Cambridge, and who in 1937 invented the jet engine. [2] In opening the Lab in 1973 the aim was to develop the technology which would underpin the emerging age of mass air travel. The Whittle Laboratory today is one of the world's leading jet engine and power generation research laboratories. [3] It has partnered with Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens for over 50 years; with Dyson for 10 years; [4] and in the last few years with many of the new entrants into the aviation sector. The Whittle Laboratory has successfully translated hundreds of primary research ideas into industrial products and its research has been awarded the American Society of Mechanical Engineers highest honour, the ‘Gas Turbine Award’ 15 times, more than any other institution or company. [5] The current focus of the Laboratory is to accelerate the decarbonisation of flight [6] and energy.
The Whittle Laboratory was initially set-up with a grant from the Science Research Council by Sir John Horlock who was to become the first director of the lab, and Sir William Hawthorne who was the head of the Cambridge University Engineering Department and who had developed the combustion chamber in Sir Frank Whittle jet engine used in the first British jet aircraft.
Professor John Denton [7] was one of the first to develop numerical methods for flow calculation in turbomachines using time-marching methods. He was soon joined by Prof Bill Dawes [8] and together the numerical methods that he has developed, including TBLOCK and MULTALL, [9] became widely used around the world receiving many international awards for his work. The advent of CFD was groundbreaking not only because for the first time researchers and designers could calculate the correct loss mechanisms within turbomachines (rather than relying on empirical correlations), but also because the numerical methods could also be used as design tools to improve component efficiencies. The Denton code TBLOCK, a CPU based Navier-Stokes solver for turbomachinery, has since been converted to a code called Turbostream [10] designed to exploit NVIDIA GPUs for massively parallel computations, resulting in a more than 20 times speed up for the same calculation. Turbostream was spun out as a separate company, with the latest version (TS4) now an unstructured code with multi-physics capabilities. [11]
Other computational methods developed in the Lab include 3DNS, [12] a high fidelity flow solver, and dbslice, [13] a JavaScript library for web-based data exploration.
The Whittle Lab is home to a number of experimental facilities used to study thermofluid mechanics in turbomachinery, propulsion, power and aviation. [14] These include:
There are also many smaller rigs used for teaching, probe calibration, real gas dynamics, wind and tidal turbine studies, heat transfer measurement, propulsor performance testing and many other applications. There are manufacturing facilities including 3D printing and CNC machining to support experimental work.
Since its origin the Whittle Laboratory primary aim has been to build a bridge across ‘the Valley of Death’ – the place where brilliant primary research is not translated into product. [15] The research partnerships with Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens have stretched back more than 50 years. [4] More recently the Whittle Laboratory has partnered with Dyson, Reaction Engines, Lilium and Green Jets. [16] The Lab has also partnered with British Cycling and the ECB on sports aerodynamics in cycling and cricket.
By radically changing both the culture and tools used in technology development, the New Whittle Laboratory [17] is aimed to dramatically cut the time required to achieve net zero flight. Recent pioneering trials at the Whittle Laboratory in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, and funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute, has demonstrated the ability to reduce the time require to design, build and test technologies by a factor of between 10 and 100, from years to months or weeks. [18] This allow research teams to work in a hardware rich environment, failing fast to learn fast. The New Whittle Laboratory is designed to scale this process, acting as a zero carbon technology accelerator. It will act as a demonstrator of this game changing technology development process, allowing it to be replicated to other sectors and around the world. [19]
The New Whittle Laboratory will house the National Centre for Propulsion and Power, providing a new variable density tunnel and rotating test stand as well as the existing experimental facilities, new manufacturing spaces and new office spaces designed to enhance collaboration between researchers, government and industry. King Charles III broke ground on the £58m facility in May 2023, [20] with building work expected to be completed by October 2025.
The Whittle Laboratory is world’s most academically successful propulsion and power lab. Work from the Lab has won over 100 international awards including the Gas Turbine Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers highest honour in the field, 15 times. [5] The award has been made once a year since 1963, with Whittle Lab work winning 10 of the last 18.
Year | Recipient | Topic |
---|---|---|
2019 | Masha Folk, Robert Miller, John Coull | The Impact of Combustor Turbulence on Turbine Loss Mechanisms |
2016 | Svilen Savov, Nicholas Atkins, Sumiu Uchida | A Comparison of Single and Double Lip Rim Seal Geometries |
2015 | Ho-On To, Robert Miller | The Effect of Aspect Ratio on Compressor Performance |
2014 | Robert Grewe, Robert Miller, Howard Hodson | The Effect of Endwall Manufacturing Variations on Turbine Performance |
2012 | Graham Pullan, Anna Young, Ivor Day, Edward Greitzer, Zoltán Spakovszky | Origins and Structure of Spike-Type Rotating Stall |
2010 | Martin Goodhand, Robert Miller | The Impact of Real Geometries on Three-Dimensional Separations in Compressors |
2009 | Budimir Rosic, Eric Curtis, John Denton | Controlling Tip Leakage Flow Over a Shrouded Turbine Rotor Using an Air-Curtain |
2006 | Budimir Rosic, John Denton | The Control of Shroud Leakage Loss by Reducing Circumferential Mixing |
2005 | Ivor Day, Christopher Freeman, John Williams | Rain Ingestion in Axial Flow Compressors at Part Speed |
2004 | Ivor Day, Christopher Freeman, Thomas Scarinci | Passive Control of Combustion Instability in a Low Emissions Aeroderivative Gas Turbine |
1997 | Tim Camp, Ivor Day | A Study of Spike and Modal Stall Phenomena in a Low-Speed Axial Compressor |
1991 | Ivor Day | Stall Inception in Axial Flow Compressors |
1986 | Simon Gallimore, Nicholas Cumpsty | Spanwise Mixing in Multistage Axial Flow Compressors |
1984 | Howard Hodson | Boundary Layer and Loss Measurements on the Rotor of an Axial-Flow Turbine |
1977 | Ivor Day, Nicholas Cumpsty, Edward Greitzer | Prediction of Compressor Performance in Rotating Stall |
A jet engine is a type of reaction engine, discharging a fast-moving jet of heated gas that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition may include rocket, water jet, and hybrid propulsion, the term jet engine typically refers to an internal combustion air-breathing jet engine such as a turbojet, turbofan, ramjet, pulse jet, or scramjet. In general, jet engines are internal combustion engines.
Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with having invented the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for a similar invention which was technically unfeasible at the time. Whittle's jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany's Hans von Ohain, who designed the first-to-fly turbojet engine.
The bypass ratio (BPR) of a turbofan engine is the ratio between the mass flow rate of the bypass stream to the mass flow rate entering the core. A 10:1 bypass ratio, for example, means that 10 kg of air passes through the bypass duct for every 1 kg of air passing through the core.
Alan Arnold Griffith, was an English engineer and the son of Victorian science fiction writer George Griffith. Among many other contributions, he is best known for his work on stress and fracture in metals that is now known as metal fatigue, as well as being one of the first to develop a strong theoretical basis for the jet engine. Griffith's advanced axial-flow turbojet engine designs were integral in the creation of Britain's first operational axial-flow turbojet engine, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2, which first ran successfully in 1941. Griffith, however, had little direct involvement in actually producing the engine, after he moved in 1939 from leading the engine department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment to start work at Rolls-Royce.
Turbomachinery, in mechanical engineering, describes machines that transfer energy between a rotor and a fluid, including both turbines and compressors. While a turbine transfers energy from a fluid to a rotor, a compressor transfers energy from a rotor to a fluid.
The University of Cambridge Department of Engineering is the largest department at the University of Cambridge and one of the leading centres of engineering in the world. The department's aim is to address the world's most pressing challenges with science and technology. To achieve this aim, the department collaborates with other disciplines, institutions, companies and entrepreneurs and adopts an integrated approach to research and teaching.
Sir William Rede Hawthorne CBE, FRS, FREng, FIMECHE, FRAES, was a British professor of engineering who worked on the development of the jet engine. Bragg-Hawthorne equation is named after him.
A blisk is a turbomachine component comprising both rotor disk and blades as a single part instead of a disk assembled with individual removable blades. Blisks generally have better aerodynamics than conventional rotors with single blades and are lighter. They may be additively manufactured, integrally cast, machined from a solid piece of material, or made by welding individual blades to a rotor disk. The term is used mainly in aerospace engine design. Blisks may also be known as integrally bladed rotors (IBR).
John "Shôn" Eirwyn Ffowcs Williams (1935–2020) was Emeritus Rank Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a former Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1996–2002). He may be best known for his contributions to aeroacoustics, in particular for his work on Concorde. Together with one of his students, David Hawkings, he introduced the far-field integration method in computational aeroacoustics based on Lighthill's acoustic analogy, known as the Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings analogy.
The Department of Engineering Science is the engineering department of the University of Oxford. It is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division. The department was ranked 3rd best institute in the UK for engineering in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.
A turbine blade is a radial aerofoil mounted in the rim of a turbine disc and which produces a tangential force which rotates a turbine rotor. Each turbine disc has many blades. As such they are used in gas turbine engines and steam turbines. The blades are responsible for extracting energy from the high temperature, high pressure gas produced by the combustor. The turbine blades are often the limiting component of gas turbines. To survive in this difficult environment, turbine blades often use exotic materials like superalloys and many different methods of cooling that can be categorized as internal and external cooling, and thermal barrier coatings. Blade fatigue is a major source of failure in steam turbines and gas turbines. Fatigue is caused by the stress induced by vibration and resonance within the operating range of machinery. To protect blades from these high dynamic stresses, friction dampers are used.
Oxsensis Ltd. is a British-based engineering business specialising in energy and aerospace equipment.
The Aeronautical/Astronautical Research Laboratory (AARL) is an aerospace engineering research facility operated by Ohio State University. It is the principal research facility of the College of Engineering's Department of Aerospace and Astronautical Engineering. It is located on the grounds of Ohio State University Airport, in Columbus, Ohio.
Sir John Harold Horlock FRS FREng was a British professor of mechanical engineering, and was vice-chancellor of both the Open University and the University of Salford, as well as vice-president of the Royal Society. In 1977, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
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Theodosios Alexander is an American academic, engineer and author. He has served as faculty and in academic administration in four universities, in the UK and USA, following the award of four graduate degrees from MIT, and work in engineering industry.
Wu Zhonghua, also known as Chung-Hua Wu, was a Chinese physicist. He was a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) researcher, Tsinghua University professor, and Founding Director of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He pioneered the general theory of three-dimensional flow for turbomachinery, which has been widely used in aircraft engine designs. Wu and his wife Li Minhua were both academicians of the CAS.
Joseph Katz is an Israel-born American fluid dynamicist, known for his work on experimental fluid mechanics, cavitation phenomena and multiphase flow, turbulence, turbomachinery flows and oceanography flows, flow-induced vibrations and noise, and development of optical flow diagnostics techniques, including Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Holographic Particle Image Velocimetry (HPIV). As of 2005, he is the William F. Ward Sr. Distinguished Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Whiting School of Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.
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