The head of General Electric and Pratt & Whitney's Engine Alliance says the GP7000 programme to develop engines for the Airbus A380 is "right on track" and moving towards the scheduled ‘design freeze' in December this year.
Alliance president Lloyd Thompson, speaking immediately before Asian Aerospace, said: "We're still in the middle of ‘risk abatement testing' and our first runs of two engine cores have demonstrated that the compressors are right where we want them to be Ð in fact we're at least 0.5% better than predicted in the HP compressor section."
Validated
This part of the engine has already been validated as it is a scaled version of the nine-stage HP compressor section in the GE90-115B twin shaft turbofan for the B777-X family of airliners.
When the engine goes into service, Thompson says that it will be the most advanced engine in the inventories of both GE and P&W, with both lower noise and reduced fuel burn compared with anything else in the skies.
"P&W's hollow titanium fan is the best out there and that's now validated too while all our tests of the scaled low pressure system swept fan blades are going according to plan."
It's anticipated that the engine will run for the first time in April 2004 with certification in July 2005. The first engines should be delivered to Airbus a month later, prior to the engine's first flight on the A380 in January 2006.
The engine, claims Thompson, could also be ideal for the proposed Boeing B747-400X (quiet, longer-range) family, although it's believed that GE's CF6-80C2B5F and P&W's PW4062 are the main contenders. This version of the ubiquitous B747 is aimed primarily at meeting stringent QC2 noise requirements set by London Heathrow, while maintaining the 747's competitiveness.
Says Thompson: "Our figures, as audited by Airbus, suggest that the engine will be at least 2dB quieter than QC2 night time departure standards, while delivering half a percent (0.8% on the freight version) better fuel burn than originally anticipated.
"This is the world's first engine where the design was led by environmental factors. The size of the fan was determined by noise considerations while emissions standards dictated the design of the compressor stages."
Source: Flight Daily News
