Overview
SPIRITECH's engineers have many years of experience with advanced materials. Our commitment to exhaust nozzles and afterburners gives us a deep understanding of how to incorporate materials such as Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC), Carbon/Carbon Composites, and Exotic Superalloys into high temperature component designs. In many cases these advanced materials posses unique features, such as above average brittleness, manufacturing limitations, and unique thermal expansions, that make integration with more commom metallic alloys challenging. SPIRITECH understands these challenges and looks to include advanced materials wherever possible in order to create the most robust, cost effective, and innovative design solutions for our customers.
MatDev™- Module for Use with SPIRITECH’s Scramjet/Ramjet Heat Exchanger Analysis Tool (SRHEAT™)
A Material Development tool (MatDev™) has been developed as an add-on module to complement SPIRITECH Advanced Products, Inc’s existing Scramjet/Ramjet Heat Exchanger Analysis Tool (SRHEAT™). SRHEAT™ is a scramjet/ramjet heat exchanger design and optimization tool that performs a thermal analysis of a heat exchanger, assesses its structural
integrity, and optimizes the heat exchanger design to minimize the cooling flow requirement and
the heat exchanger weight. SRHEAT™ can be used to evaluate and design complex thermal
cooling systems, like those found in dual-mode scramjets for hypersonic aerospace propulsion, that have high thermal loading with limited availability of heat sink sources. MatDev™, in
combination with SRHEAT™, is a trade study tool that is used to compare and contrast high
temperature metal alloys and high temperature composites (i.e. CMC, C/SiC) in fuel cooled, heat
exchanger liner panel design applications.
MatDev™ uses typical engineering stress calculations
and formulations to assess non-traditional stresses, such as interlaminar tension, interlaminar
shear, in-plane shear, and flexure. These non-traditional calculations allow MatDev™ to accurately
evaluate laminated, directional materials, such as high temperature composites. MatDev™ provides detailed outputs summarizing the resulting stress, weight, optimum heat exchanger
design, and cooling flow requirements to provide the user with critical insight into the key drivers
of the heat exchanger system of interest. Because MatDev™ brings composite material analysis capabilities to SRHEAT™, it enables the code to evaluate critical laminate stresses like interlaminar and biaxial stresses in addition
to time dependent stresses like 1% creep and creep rupture. This combined analytical model provides a
multidisciplinary system level thermal analysis tool that balances the heat load from the gas path, through the liners, and into the fuel.
The MatDev™ module within the SRHEAT™ architecture is designed with the flexibility to run single component or large system
trade studies quickly and efficiently. More importantly, MatDev™’s trade study capabilities provide tremendous
insight into liner designs for hypersonic flight. It is also an invaluable tool for someone designing and developing
new, advanced, high temperature materials. MatDev™ easily performs sensitivity trade studies so adjustments in
material properties can be evaluated in terms of their system level impacts. MatDev™’s multidisciplinary approach
allows an engineer to simultaneously assess the impacts on critical system level parameters (fuel flow rates, liner
temperatures, fuel coking limits, stress limits, etc) due to a variety of loading conditions (thermal, mechanical,
aerodynamic). MatDev™’s post-processing capabilities offer tremendous insights into each design parameter (stress, temperature, etc) so that an analyst can determine the margin each parameter has in order to understand which
design and/or material parameters are limiting the design configuration. By strategically using MatDev™’s features
and capabilities, one can determine the true “root cause” of a design or material failure which, in turn, provides
timely, essential information and direction for further design and material development. This translates into
tremendous time and cost savings.
AIAA-2010-6787: Material Development (MatDev™) Module for use with SPIRITECH's Scramjet/Ramjet Heat Exchanger Analysis Tool (SRHEAT™) |
