Main Effects of Intercooling and Regeneration On Aeronautical Gas Turbine Engines

The reduction of fuel consumption in aircraft engines, together with the achievement of high performance levels, is always one of the main aim of the designers. Along with these needs another engine characteristic has become of primary importance: the emission reduction. To achieve these goals it does not seem suitable to improve the technology maintaining the scheme of actual engines. Some new features need to be introduced in the engines. Regeneration and intercooling seem to be most promising in this sense. The aero engines that seem more suitable for the introduction of these practices are turboprop and high by pass ratio turbofan. This work presents the results of a study about the effects of the introduction of regeneration and intercooling on fuel consumption and performances of turboprop and turbofan engines. The study has been done by the development of a thermodynamic numerical code, allowing the simulation of the working thermal cycle of the two engines at different engine and operating conditions.