Embraer today rolled out the E190-E2, the first member of the second-generation E-Jet family launched in 2013.
The aircraft is set to enter flight testing later this year and be delivered to a yet-to-be-disclosed launch customer in 2018, with the newly-redesigned E195-E2 following a year later and the E175-E2 coming in 2019.
Airlines have placed commitments for more than 600 E2 jets in less than three years, including about 270 firm orders, says Embraer commercial aviation president Paulo Cesar e Silva.
"The reception of this aircraft in the market has been excellent," Silva says.
The E190-E2 exchanges the General Electric CF34 engine of the original model for the Pratt & Whitney PW1900G, the last member in a string of geared-turbofan engines developed for five different airframers since 2007.
That single change drives an 11% reduction in fuel burn compared with the original model, says Embraer. Another visible change is a longer and more efficient wingspan, yielding a further 3.5% reduction in fuel burn.
Finally, Embraer has installed a new fly-by-wire flight control system developed with Moog. That significant change means Embraer can allow the horizontal stabilisers to contribute to aerodynamic lift, rather than countering the pitch-up force produced by the wing, bringing a final 1.5% cut in fuel consumption.
In testing completed so far, Embraer has validated through ground vibration trials that the airframe should not be susceptible to flutter effects, says Luis Carlos Affonso, chief operating officer for Embraer Commercial Aviation. Honeywell has delivered an avionics system with a safety-of-flight certification, meaning it is ready for a maiden sortie. Other key systems remain in ground-based laboratory testing.
A hydraulics rig, powering the ailerons, spoilers, elevators and landing gear with 3,000psi pressure, is commissioned at Embraer's facility in Eugenio de Melho. A separate rig at the site is testing the electrical systems, including five slat panels and four flap panels on each wing. The combined rig tests have accumulated more than 14,000h in less than three years of study.
As a major derivative of the original E-Jet family, the E2 version benefits from the experience and lessons learned from over 15 years of development and operation. Embraer selected Honeywell avionics to keep the flying experience similar for E-Jet pilots, even retaining the original ram-horn yokes rather than sidesticks despite adopting fly-by-wire controls.
Some of the most important lessons from the original E-Jet family are visible only to those intimately familiar with operating the aircraft.
Embraer introduced a rudimentary, partial fly-by-wire system on the E1 model, but has learned new tricks from more than a decade of integration experience.
For the E2, a more advanced, full fly-by-wire system is separated from the cockpit's avionics system, rather than directly integrated with the main computer. Embraer adopted this federated approach in order to simplify adding features to the avionics that do not involve any adjustments to the flight-control surfaces.
"[Fly-by-wire] is a very stable system during the life of the programme, whereas with the avionics you do have changes," says Affonso. "We concluded it would be better in this specific case to make it federated."
Other changes were made to make the E2 family easier to maintain. For example, both generations of the E-Jet are equipped with a UTC Aerospace Systems innovation called SmartProbe, an electronic air data system that replaces the pitot tube. Each aircraft is delivered with two coupled pairs of SmartProbes for redundancy.
The original version of the SmartProbe had come with a flaw for maintainers. If one probe began reporting errant altitude data, they needed to inspect both sensors of the coupled pair to find the source of the problem. The new SmartProbe for the E2 family includes better diagnostic sensors that help trace the source of a data flaw to the errant probe without the need inspect both.
As the E190-E2 enters flight testing, Embraer is planning to redesign the assembly system for all its commercial aircraft, necessitating a delicately choreographed transition even as the original E-Jet family continues delivering at a rate of almost eight aircraft per month.
A tour around the Sao Jose dos Campos factory complex reveals a complicated manufacturing layout. In separate buildings, workers build up and join the fuselage and wing assemblies. Both assemblies are then towed to another building where they are mated together. The green aircraft is then towed to the paint hangar, then finally moved into final assembly where the engines and vertical stabiliser are installed.
Over the next several months, Embraer is consolidating fuselage and wing assembly build-up in the same building. Those assemblies will then be transported to another building to be mated together. Some build-up work in the former fuselage assembly building is being moved to a hangar now housing final assembly of the Phenom 100/300, which is being moved to Melbourne in Florida by the middle of the summer.
The end result of new layout is more space in Sao Jose dos Campos dedicated to what executives hope will become a booming market for jets of about 75-130 seats.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
