Posted on 10/09/2007 1:42:03 PM PDT by Freeport
Pratt & Whitney’s Geared Turbofan (GTF) engine has been selected to power the Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ), launching the first of several next-generation engine programmes promising to deliver the next leap in fuel efficiency for airliners.
“We believe the [GTF] offers a technological breakthrough that will provide the best economy and performance for the Mitsubishi Regional Jet," said Kazuo Tsukuda, President, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., in a statement. The MRJ is a 70-seat to 90-seat airliner.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
Sleek.
The demonstrator GTF won’t fly until 2009 and won’t be available until 2011.
A bit premature to “select” an engine that doesn’t even exist yet. But then the jet doesn’t exist yet, either.
LOL!
WTF? The Japanese are going to get back in the airliner business?
Who let that happen?
Of course I wasn't shown everything.
The fact that now they’re building them in conjunction with people like Boeing.
They tried this before in the 80s and the US makers got the FAA to shut them down. Can’t do that so easily any more..
Crinton.
Turbine Technology 101: “SUCK, SQUEEZE, BANG, & BLOW”
;^)
My son-in-law works for Pratt & Whitney here in San Diego. Great company.
Everybody in the world is working on a RJ - execept the US.
Yo-Yo.
They have been taking about and test rigging geared fans since the early 90's when I was still at the "Eagle".
They had a huge rig, counter-rotating constant speed prop type fans (yes shrouded), it did well, how well I won't say, but it weighed a ton.
Great minds, and a can do company, I wish my old team mates Godspeed on this project, and Dr. Ed Crowe (former head of Engineering, retired) was spot on with this enthusiasm for this project.
This is a game changer...
Now if they only can convince Boeing to put it on their Blended-Wing-Body.....
Out of curiosity, what does Mitsubishi Heavy Industries build, earth moving equipment ?
They build submarines, warships, freighters, electric generators (we were shown some 140 Mega Watt generators being built for China. Just the rotors weighed 50 tonnes), helicoptors, and more. The place is huge.
Here is another article from Flightglobal.com about the P&W GTF. Other GTF articles can be found here at Flightglobal.com but you'll have to drill down through the different pages of stories to find them all. Facinating stuff, really. The nearest rival is the UDF, which would work well with the BWB concept, but not so much for an underwing aircraft design.
>
MTU Aero Engines designs high-speed turbine for P&W's GTF geared turbofan
By Rob Coppinger
MTU Aero Engines which manufactures and repairs commercial and military engines is applying technology from Europe's CLEAN environmental aero-engine research programme to Pratt & Whitney's geared turbofan (GTF).
The German company has developed a high-speed low-pressure turbine based on its CLEAN design for the GTF demonstrator engine in final assembly at P&W.
Details of the design challenges posed by the GTF's increased LP spool speed were presented by MTU Aero Engines at a recent European conference in Berlin.
P&W's other GTF partners are Avio for the fan drive gear system, Volvo Aero for the turbine exhaust case and Goodrich for the slimline nacelle.
P&W plans to begin ground tests in November under a programme to demonstrate the GTF's technology readiness by the end of 2008, to support entry into service as early as 2012. The programme includes four to five months of flight tests on P&W's Boeing 747 engine testbed, beginning in mid-2008.
The GTF is designed to reduce specific fuel consumption 12% over current turbofans by increasing bypass ratio to 10-12. Reducing fan pressure ratio requires a large diameter, and a geared fan allows tip speed to be reduced for lower noise.
The reduction gearbox also allows the LP compressor and turbine speed to be increased, to extract more work from fewer stages and airfoils, reducing weight.
"Weight reductions of the low-pressure compressor and turbine will compensate for the gear mechanism mass. We think GTF is the answer to the environmental challenge that is out there," says MTU's chief engineer for next-generation systems integration Claus Riegler.
The 31,000shp (23,100kW) fan drive gearbox in the 30,000lb thrust-(134kN) class GTF demonstrator provides a 3:1 reduction. This allows the 1.9m (75in)-diameter, 18-blade fan to run at two-thirds the speed of a conventional engine while the low-pressure spool runs two and a half times faster than normal, says Bob Saia, P&W vice-president, next-generation product family.
While the demonstrator uses the high-pressure core of the existing PW6000 turbofan, the high-speed LP compressor and turbine have been designed specifically for the GTF by P&W and MTU respectively.
Compared with the similarly sized IAE V2500, 900 airfoils have been removed in the LPT and 600 in the LPC, a reduction in blade count of 60. "Decoupling the fan allows the turbine to run at a more efficient, higher speed and do more work with fewer parts," says Saia.
MTU says its CLEAN high-speed LPT, on which the GTF design is based, has three stages compared with five in the V2500, for a similar power output. The individual disks are heavier, but the overall LPT is shorter and lighter.
Design features include a cutback tip shroud to reduce centrifugal forces in the lightweight titanium-aluminide airfoil and increase in airfoil cross-section from tip to root to reduce stress in the blade and a blade root designed to reduce loads at the disk rim.
After ground runs in Florida, flight tests of the GTF on P&W's 747 testbed will investigate its performance and operability. The fan-drive and thermal-management systems will be tested in flight conditions including zero-g and windmilling, as well as different manoeuvre loads and deflections.
Thanks for the info,Heavy Industry might be an understatement for Mitsubishi.
I had no idea they built all of those things !!
Does that mean that I shouldn't have signed a letter of intent to sign a contract to purchase 50 of the MRJs for the Airline I plan to start? : )
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