Experimental study of an aircraft fuel tank inerting system

Abstract In this work, a simulated aircraft fuel tank inerting system has been successfully established based on a model tank. Experiments were conducted to investigate the influences of different operating parameters on the inerting effectiveness of the system, including flow rate of the inert gas (nitrogen-enriched air), inert gas concentration, fuel load of the tank and different inerting approaches. The experimental results show that under the same operating conditions, the time span of a complete inerting process decreased as the flow rate of inert gas was increased; the time span using the inert gas with 5% oxygen concentration was much longer than that using pure nitrogen; when the fuel tank was inerted using the ullage washing approach, the time span increased as the fuel load was decreased; the ullage washing approach showed the best inerting performance when the time span of a complete inerting process was the evaluation criterion, but when the decrease of dissolved oxygen concentration in the fuel was also considered to characterize the inerting effectiveness, the approach of ullage washing and fuel scrubbing at the same time was the most effective.