Sebastian has recently joined AAPS CDT after working for a year as a technical support engineer for instrumentation company Katronic Technologies. He completed his MSc and BEng courses at Coventry University, both in aerospace engineering, during which he had an opportunity to complete a one-year placement working for Bosch as a sales engineer. His Bachelor thesis dealt with estalbishing Flying Quality assessment for eVTOL aircraft, and his MSc thesis with assessing Inlet Condition generator created by PhD student at Coventry University for Large-Eddy simulation, which required knowledge of CFD, and OpenFOAM software. He is an active member of Royal Aeronautical Society, and is looking into preserving the links with the society as well as establishing more that would benefit IAAPS.
Sebastian's PhD will look at Experimental and Theoretical Modelling of Heat Transfer in Aero-engine Compressors.
With increasing compression-ratio demand in gas turbine engines for fuels of the future like SAF and Hydrogen, the tighter tolerances are to be expected. This includes monitoring and predicting expansion of the compressor blades inside the engine, which is dependent on the heat transfer inside the compressor cavity. Since the heat transfer inside these rotating cavities is not static, but depends on the flow structures inside, which also depend on the heat transfer characteristics, it poses conjugate problem that requires further research. By means of experimental investigation the data representative of different operating conditions for gas turbine engines can be obtained and fed into theoretical modelling, and computational fluid dynamics validations.
To achieve variety of operating conditions, not only different non-dimensional parameters of the flow must be investigated, but also numerous modifications to the experimental rig must be added. This includes incorporating pressure sensors, and pre-swirler that would introduce swirl to the upstream flow that is present in all gas turbine engines on aircrafts. This will enable manufacturers to better understand design requirements and limitations of the gas turbine engines, that will contribute towards increasing efficiency of their products and their sustainability.
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