Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI) is currently being researched as a potential method to improve efficiency and decrease emissions for the next generation of commercial aircraft. While reenergizing the boundary layer formed over the fuselage of an aircraft has many system level benefits, ingesting the low velocity boundary layer flow through a serpentine inlet into a turbofan engine adversely affects the performance of the engine. The available literature has only yielded studies of the effects of

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... this specific type of inlet distortion on engine performance in the form of numerical simulations. This work seeks to provide an experimental analysis of the effects of BLI-type distortion on a turbofan engine's performance. A modified JT15D-1 turbofan engine was investigated in this study. Inlet flow distortion was created by a layered wire mesh distortion screen designed to create a total pressure distortion profile at the aerodynamic interface plane (AIP) similar to NASA's Inlet A boundary layer ingesting inlet flow profile. Results of this investigation showed a 15.5% decrease in stream thrust and a 14% increase in TSFC in the presence of BLI-type distortion.