Projekt

Daten zum Projekt

Volcanic Ash Deposition in Jet Engines

Initiative: Freigeist-Fellowships
Bewilligung: 02.07.2015
Laufzeit: 5 Jahre

Projektinformationen

Safe air travel requires clean flight corridors. But within hours of a volcanic eruption (e.g. Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland in 2010), volcanic ash clouds are formed, containing particle concentrations which represent a potentially fatal hazard for aircraft operation. The high operation temperatures (1200 - 2000°C) of jet engines exacerbate the impact of volcanic ash, causing it to re-melt and potentially to stick to turbine parts. Despite the urgency, the role of volcanic ash deposition in jet engines (VADJEs) has not been adequately addressed. This is in part due to its complexity and the multidisciplinary nature of solutions to the problem. Here, research will transcend the boundaries of different fields (e.g. geosciences, aircraft material science and mechanical engineering), blend concepts from chemical engineering and biometrics and employ state-of-the-art technologies from coal combustion, high temperature surface materials, and optical physics to explore, both experimentally and analytically, how volcanic ash properties affect their interactions with jet engines. The conditions which are crucial to deteriorating jet engine performance in response to VADJEs will be constrained and a suitable method to produce "self-cleaning" thermal barrier coatings in jet engines to repel molten volcanic ash will be developed.

Projektbeteiligte

  • Dr. Wenjia Song, EngD

    Universität München
    Fakultät für Geowissenschaften
    Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften
    Sektion für Mineralogie, Petrologie und Geochemie
    München