Airbus will put a marker down in the development effort of its next-generation narrowbody airliner this year when it tests Pratt & Whitney's GTF geared turbofan on its A340-600 flying testbed as part of its effort to evaluate new technologies for its planned A320 successor.
The airframer says the evaluation in the fourth quarter of this year will be focused on the new architecture that the engine incorporates and how the powerplant interfaces with an airframe, rather than a specific analysis of the performance. "Airbus will be the first airframer to have hands-on experience of the GTF," says the airframer's director of strategic marketing, Philippe Jarry. "We want to be the first to understand the new technology."
The agreement with P&W to examine the GTF on the A340 was reached "as Airbus needs to understand whether the use of gearbox-configured powerplants is viable on future products", says Jarry. "Brochure [claims] are not enough. Nothing is more convincing than the real hardware." Jarry adds: "We need P&W to demonstrate the benefit of the trade they've made - the gearbox, number of parts, sophistication."
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© H.Gousse/Airbus |
He points out that as the GTF demonstrator is "a hybrid and does not represent the technology that Airbus is expecting for its next-generation A320 - which will reach the market no earlier than 2017 - it will be difficult for us to evaluate the performance of the engine". Rather, the tests will be used "to understand how the new architecture works - specifically the gearbox installation and operation". He says the flight tests will examine whether the engine "keeps its integrity and whether there are any installation or engine behaviour specifics that need to be adjusted on the aircraft".
The A340-600 testbed will be fully instrumented to evaluate the key parameters of the engine, which will be tested at "different altitudes and speeds and in various manoeuvres to examine the behaviour in conditions as close as possible to real operations", says Jarry.
There have been many sceptics who have questioned the ability of such a configuration to work reliably in routine airline operations, says Jarry, and these potential problems will be explored: "There have been questions about the thrust that the gearbox could sustain and transmit and concerns that the temperature would be uncontrollable and there would be issues cooling the engine and oil, etc. What we hear from P&W is that the test engine's behaviour is very encouraging, so we need to test this."
The A340-600 testbed will take off with the GTF in the fourth quarter
Source: Flight International
