Development of a novel rotary flow control valve with an electronic actuator and a pressure compensator valve for a gas turbine engine fuel control system

This paper presents a new rotary proportional flow control valve with Cam-Nozzle configuration. The rotating cam against the fixed nozzle changes the flow area and then can meter the fuel flow. This valve equipped with a pressure compensator plunger type valve to retaining constant pressure difference across the flow control or metering valve. The cam shaft directly coupled to an electronic servomotor type rotary actuator and then it is possible to apply digital control techniques such as pulse width modulation (PWM) in this control system. This new valve configuration is developed for an electro hydro mechanical fuel control system in a gas turbine engine. In addition to aero engine application, this type of flow metering valve can widely be used in industrial hydraulic systems. In this unit, the output flow is proportional to the cam's angular position (or throttle command) and it is not sensitive to pressure fluctuations at nozzle inlet and outlet. The aim of this new design is to modify a manual single adjusted hydro-pneumatic fuel control unit to obtain a new electro-hydraulic fuel control system for a gas turbine engine. The main innovations in the presented fuel metering unit include new design of the rotary valve opening shape (Cam-Nozzle) without metal to metal contact, use of a rotary electronic actuating mechanism and also direct coupling between the actuator and the rotating cam. The increased fuel metering precision in the new flow control valve has improved the ultimate control accuracy of system. A computer simulation software based on the proposed model, is performed to predict the steady state and transient performance and to analyze effect of important design parameters on valve outlet fuel flow and obtain the final design parameters. The validity of the proposed valve configuration is assessed experimentally in the steady state and transient modes of operation. The results show good agreement between simulation and experimental in both modes (max. 4% deviation).