View of the volcanic ash test facility
View of the volcanic ash test facility
Under Project iVar, which is being conducted in collaboration with the Physics and Environmental Measurement Techniques Laboratory at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, the turbine blades of a small gas turbine have been coated with commercially available, flight-tested and also potential future thermal insulation layers. In a test system similar to a wind tunnel, specified volcanic ash concentrations are evenly dispersed into the intake air of the turbine, thus creating the conditions in the turbine of flying through an almost realistic volcanic ash cloud. This enables the damaging effect of volcanic ash particles on a jet engine to be investigated under the most realistic test conditions possible.
