- Author
-
Burns, M.
|
Cavage, W. M.
|
Hill, R.
|
Morrison, R.
- Title
- Flight-Testing of the FAA Onboard Inert Gas Generation System on an Airbus A320.
- Coporate
- Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ
- Sponsor
- Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM: National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900; Rush Service (Telephone Orders Only) 800-553-6847 FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Federal Aviation Administration, William J. Hughes Technical Center's full-text technical reports page. Website: http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/
- Keywords
-
inert gas
|
flight tests
|
fuel tanks
|
oxygen concentration
|
data acquisition
|
inerting
|
aircraft fuel tanks
- Identifiers
- nitrogen-enriched air; hollow-fiber membrane; Onboard Oxygen Analysis System (OBOAS)fuel tank inerting; air separation module (ASM)
- Abstract
- Significant emphasis has been placed on fuel tank safety since the TWA flight 800 accident in July 1996. Extensive development and analysis has illustrated that fuel tank inerting could potentially be cost-effective if air separation modules (ASM), based on hollow-fiber membrane technology, could be used in an efficient way. To illustrate this, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), with the assistance of several aviation-oriented companies, developed an onboard inert gas generation system with ASMs that uses aircraft bleed air to generate nitrogen-enriched air at varying flow and purity (oxygen concentration) during a commercial airplane flight cycle. The FAA performed a series of ground and flight tests designed to prove the simplified inerting concept that is being proposed by the FAA. The FAA-developed system was mounted in the cargo bay of an A320 operated by Airbus for the purposes of research and development and used to inert the aircraft center wing fuel tank during testing. The system and center wing fuel tank were instrumented to allow for the analysis of the system performance as well as inerting capability. The FAA onboard oxygen analysis system was used to measure the oxygen concentration in the center wing tank continuously during operation of the inerting system. The results of the tests indicated that the concept of the simplified inerting system is valid and that the air separation module dynamic characteristics were as expected for the limited test plan performed. Both one- and two-ASM configuration tests gave the expected performance with ASM pressure having the expected effect on flow rate and the duel-flow performance being predictable. Bleed air consumption was greater than expected during the cruise phase of flight. Additional research is needed to determine what changes in system design or operational methodology would best reduce the bleed airflow and the associated cost. The fuel tank inerting results illustrated that, as expected, no stratification or heterogeneous oxygen concentrations occurred in the tank for the inerting tests performed, in part due to the essentially rectangular box configuration of the tank, allowing easy distribution of the inert gas. A simple analytical model of the inerting process illustrated good agreement with the measured data. The measured effect of the high-flow mode was significant, allowing the single-membrane configuration to maintain an inert ullage (less then 12%) during the entire flight cycle, even with the very high rate of descent employed for the flight-tests. When the high-flow mode was not used, the ullage reached a peak of 15% oxygen by volume. Fuel had virtually no effect on the resulting oxygen concentrations observed in all the tests.