Towards Sustainable Aviation: LES of an Open Fan Blade at Flight Reynolds Number using Exascale Supercomputing

As the aviation industry aims for net zero CO₂ by 2050, a new aircraft engine architecture using an open fan, rather than a ducted fan typically used today, promises a significant reduction in the energy required for flight and hence an associated reduction in fuel consumption and emissions. We present wall-resolved LES of a full 3D open fan blade using the high-order, unstructured solver GENESIS. In contrast to prior work at moderate Re representative of wind tunnel conditions, the present LES is at full-scale flight Re and was performed at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF) exascale supercomputer Frontier. The LES provides unique insights into the detailed flow physics, turbulence model shortcomings, as well as the aerodynamic and acoustic performance of the open fan blade at flight Re, years in advance of when full-scale flight testing typically occurs in an engine development program.