The thermal stresses experienced by aviation fuel in modern jet engines may lead to the formation of undesirable and possibly harmful insoluble materials, such as lacquers, on heat exchangers and control surfaces, that reduce efficiency and require extra maintenance.

Aircraft fuel systems operate mainly under turbulent flow conditions. Most large-scale realistic test rigs operate in the turbulent flow regime but fuel volumes are very large and test times are very long.

This test method tests fuel under turbulent flow (high Reynolds number) conditions, and it gives a quantitative result under standard operating conditions of 65 or 125 min. Continuous analysis of results during the test allows performance of the fuel to be monitored in real time thus enabling the test time to be reduced manually or automatically, if required.

The results of this test method are not expected to correlate with existing test methods for all fuels, since the test methods and operating conditions are different (see Appendix X2).