Question: On your last project assignment, what problems did you identify that had been previously overlooked?

Priyanka Dhopade answered on 14 Mar 2016:

During my last project assignment, I was looking at the flow of air through a compressor of a jet engine. The job of the compressor is to raise the pressure of the air, which it does by turning the flow using complicated sets of rotating and stationary blades. A lot of the air that gets sucked into the front of the engine goes through the core of the compressor – but some of it can escape and enter parts of the engine where there shouldn’t be any flow of air. This is called a “leak”.

Because the efficiency of the engine depends so much on how high the compressor can raise the pressure of the air, any “leaks” can make it less efficient.

I built a computer model of a section of the compressor and analysed the flow of air through it and identified a small but serious leak that no one had previously expected.

Also, the temperature of the air towards the end of the compressor can be pretty high (around 800 degrees Celsius!) so any air that’s leaking away from the engine core can hit some unsuspecting metal parts and cause them to heat up, which can damage them!

I showed my findings to engineers at Rolls-Royce who design engines and they were pretty grateful. We are still researching ways to stop the leak.