05 - Propulsion and Energy
STRUCTURAL DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE STUDY OF A TWO-STAGE DYNAMIC PRESSURE OIL-AIR SEPARATOR
S. Li¹, J.P. Hu¹, J. Wang¹, Y.P. Li¹, Y.B. Wang, China; ¹Northwestern Polytechnical University School of Power and Energy, China
In an aircraft engine, high-speed rotating components generate significant heat during operation and therefore rely on lubricating oil for cooling and lubrication. In an open-loop engine, the lubricating oil is prone to mixing with gas during circulation, forming an oil-gas mixture that degrades its lubrication and cooling performance. Consequently, reducing the gas content in the supplied lubricating oil is of critical importance, and an oil-gas separation device is typically installed in the return line. Currently, dynamic-type oil-gas separators used in small engines suffer from insufficient separation efficiency, making it difficult to effectively separate oil from air. This paper investigates a two-stage dynamic oil-gas separator. First, the performance differences between single- stage and two-stage separation configurations are compared and analyzed. The results indicate that the two- stage oil-gas separator outperforms the single-stage oil-gas separator in terms of separation efficiency and oil consumption ratio. Second, the influence of the wake separator structure on the overall separation efficiency is examined, and it is determined that a wake separator with an orifice diameter of 1.5 mm achieves the best separation performance. The effect of the inlet area on the two-stage separator's performance is also explored, with results showing that an inlet area 1.75 times that of the initial model yields the best performance. Finally, a multi-operating-condition analysis is conducted on the optimized two-stage oil-gas separator. The results demonstrate that the optimized structure exhibits improved performance over the initial design in terms of separation efficiency, oil consumption ratio, and pressure drop.
DOI: 10.71945/icas2026_0341