Engine makers tackle incremental improvements by Thierry Dubois
Williams International FJ33-5A and FJ44-4A
The number of engines known to be in the design or development phase is relatively low, compared to what it used to be a few years ago. Several engine manufacturers are therefore redeploying their efforts to incremental improvements and, for the longer term, research or demonstration programs. Currently in the certification testing phase are GE’s Passport, Snecma’s Silvercrest and Williams International’s FJ33-5 and FJ44-4A-QPM. .
GE Aviation
The GE Passport program has logged 7,800 hours of engine testing, representing 2,100 cycles, Shawn O’Day, GE Aviation’s senior vice president for business and general aviation, told AIN. The 16,500-pound-thrust engine is in the middle of ground endurance testing. The final big hurdle, as O’Day put it, will be the fan blade-out test in the first quarter of next year. Asked how the two-year delay for the Global 7000/8000 is impacting the Passport program, he explained that GE (Booth N2304) has not changed its schedule. “We are running our tests how we committed we would do, pursuing certification as planned,” he said. GE has delivered two flight-test engines to Bombardier, which has installed them on a Global 7000 prototype. “We might want to sell the Passport to anybody else who may need it,” O’Day added. GE’s 9,220-pound-thrustCF343B MTO, a new evolution of the CF-34-3B, is set to enter
service by year-end on the Bombardier Challenger 650. It has 5 percent more takeoff thrust than the CF34-3B on the 605. The additional thrust is pilot-selectable with a new performance thrust setting. The GE Honda Aero Engines joint venture company in March received its production certificate for the 2,095-pound-thrust HF120. The new turbofan powers the HondaJet, which was awarded provisional certification by the FAA in March. The HF120 has also been selected as
a retrofit engine for the Sierra Industries Sapphire upgrade program for legacy Cessna CitationJet platforms. With the H series turboprops (750 to 850 shp), GE has been selected on 10 applications. “We think we can make a big impact on the turboprop market,” O’Day said. An electronic engine control unit (EECU) has recently finished ground testing on a Nextant G90XT, a remanufactured King Air C90, which is equipped with H75 engines. The EECU cuts pilot workload, as it enables single-lever power control. What about a more powerful version of the H series? “I’d be lying if I said we want to stop here,” O’Day answered. The 1,200- to 2,000-shp bracket is where GE sees demand. A new center of excellence for
Snecma Silvercrest
turboprops at a still-to-bedetermined location in Europe will be “a key piece of the story,” O’Day went on. For future engines, GE has no demonstrators, but does have conceptual studies. “We still have things to explore to improve specific fuel consumption [SFC], etc,” O’Day said. He emphasized that a technology has to buy its way into a program; no ceramicmatrix composite (CMC) can be found on the Passport, for instance. But with so many technologies in the portfolio, “you can pick and choose,” O’Day pointed out, referring to development work on the GE3000 military turboshaft. .
As of late October, the Dassault Falcon 5X still had yet to make its maiden flight with its pair of 11,450-pound-thrust Snecma Silvercrests. Certification target for the Silvercrest remains in the first half of 2016, despite the fact that Snecma (Booth N5317) is having to resolve slight deformation of the engine casing that occured during high-temperature testing. The French engine maker is developing a modification to remedy this issue, which has delayed the first flight of the 5X. Textron Aviation had earmarked the Silvercrest for Cessna’s developmental supermidsize Citation Longitude (now a 3,400-nm stretched version of the recently certified Latitude instead of the originally planned 4,000 nm range). But Textron Aviation decided instead that it will instead use Honeywell’s HTF7000 series engine for the Longtitude. .
GE Passport
12 NBAA Convention News • November 17, 2015 • www.ainonline.com
Snecma
Williams International
The Williams International (Booth C8125) 1,800-poundthrust FJ33-5 is “in the final steps of certification,” said vice president of business development Matt Huff. FAA approval should be completed over the next few months, in time to support deliveries of the Cirrus Vision SF50 single-engine jet in 2016. Flight testing of the
3,435-pound-thrust FJ44-4AQPM on the Pilatus PC-24 is “progressing very well,” which will lead to engine certification next year, according to Huff. .
Honeywell
Honeywell’s (Booth C7807) HTF7000 family production line is now running at a quick pace, senior technical sales manager Mike Bevans told AIN. The FAA has certified Embraer’s Legacy 450, and other applications for the HFT7000 series engine include the Legacy 500, Bombardier Challenger 300/350, Gulfstream G280 and the new Citation Longitude. Upgraded versions may well be launched in the near term, AIN understands. Super-midsize and midsize jets are working well for charter and fractionalownership companies, and airframers are therefore looking at that market segment. “‘How can we help them get a bit more speed or a bit more range, still climbing direct to FL410?’ I answer questions [like these] all the time,” Bevans said. Honeywell is participating in the second phase of the FAA’s Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (CLEEN II) program. Funding is shared with the FAA on a 50-50 basis. “We are doing things with hightemperature turbine seals and low thermal conductivity coatings for the high-pressure turbine [HPT],” Bevans said. A new nickel-based superalloy, called Alloy 10, is being used for the disk of the HPT’s second stage. “This is the most hostile environment in the engine in terms of heat, speed and load,” Bevans stressed. Blade tip clearance is another area of work in the turbine to improve the engine’s power-to-weight ratio. Honeywell looks to CMCs– not currently used on Honeywell engines–in hopes of lowering weight. Parts are being tested at full size for tolerance and durability. CMCs can be used only in static components, such as the exhaust system gas path. They are suitable for hot-section components that are not