Sundstrand Aerospace, Rockford, Illinois, is developing an Integrated Thermal Energy Management (I-TEM) software assessment tool under contract (F33615-91-C-3407) to the Air Force Flight Dynamics Directorate at Wright Laboratory.
The program is focused on developing a user-friendly, automated aircraft analysis tool capable of evaluating multiple thermal energy management approaches and assessing vehicle-level impacts. I-TEM compiles and uses extensive subsystem knowledge in areas of thermal management, electrical power, auxiliary power, actuation, environmental control and fuel systems to promote more efficient aircraft design. Vehicle level penalties (i.e., weight, size, reliability, power extraction) are assessed and used to estimate overall vehicle performance for a given aircraft, mission, and heat load profile. The code incorporates fuel cooling loop analysis software, hydraulic system thermal modeling, environmental control system analysis, ram air recovery assessment, mission profile, atmospheric characterization, and heat transfer techniques.
The analysis methodology is efficiently incorporated within a KAPPA-PC® expert system software program. The KAPPA-PC shell provides the framework for a user-friendly package that can be applied to a broad range of problems and applications. When conducting a thermal system analysis, the user has access to defaults and empirically derived system data allowing reasonable solutions to be obtained with minimal input information. The expert system is flexible, allowing expansion of a particular technical area or application to other aircraft, without rewriting the entire code or adversely affecting other sections of the software. I-TEM will be a valuable tool, dramatically decreasing the time and effort required by Air Force personnel to perform top-level thermal assessments of both existing and future aircraft systems.