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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 0301.PDF
TECHNICAL: AIR TRANSPORT Valsan freezes 727 winglet design after flight tests Valsan winglets succeed Valsan has frozen the design of a drag-reducing winglet for Boeing 727s after com pleting a successful flight-test programme. The aircraft modification spe cialists will certificate a winglet- equipped Boeing 727-100 this month and hope to start pro duction of winglet sets in April. Valsan says that, after a three-month flight-test pro gramme, the winglet demon strated a reduction in specific fuel consumption of 5% over "customary stage lengths". The company says that, if a winglet- modified 727 flies 250h per month, it will save over '758,000 litres (200,000 US gal) NEWS IN BRIEF TECHNOFAN LAB Aircraft air-conditioning spe cialist Technofan is to estab lish an acoustic research lab oratory in Blagnac, Toulouse, with Cert Onera and the Paul Sabatier University. The labo ratory will be used for a Fr26 million ($5 million), four- year acoustics research pro gramme into turbo-machin ery suitable for aerospace applications. FINNISH MONOPULSE The Finnish National Board of Aviation is to buy three Thomson-CSF RSM 970 monopulse secondary radars for air-traffic control. The first will enter service in Sep tember this year. of fuel per year. It also produces a better initial climb and alti tude capability, says Valsan. The winglet design resembles a scaled-down version of the wingtip device fitted to the 747-400, and will cost $750,000 a set. They will ini tially be produced at the rate of four sets per month. Winglets are being sold sepa rately to the company's Boeing 727 re-engining modifications but Valsan is offering a combi nation of both. The company claims fuel-burn reductions of between 16-18% if both modifi cations are used. Fourteen Valsan hush-kitted 727s are now in service • Garrett goes for MD-12X auxiliary power unit BY JOHN BAILEY IN PHOENIX Garrett hopes to consolidate its success in the Boeing 777 auxiliary power unit (APU) competition by proposing the same unit for the new McDon nell Douglas MD-12X. Garrett was awarded the 777 contract last December with its new GTCP331-500 unit, a de velopment of the existing GTCP331 series which is al ready standard on the Boeing 757, 767 and Airbus A330/340. The company is now working with McDonnell Douglas (as is competitor Pratt & Whitney Canada) to draw up the MD- 12X APU specification, and ex pects to submit a formal pro posal by the end of May. Garrett expects to invest $50 million-$100 million in devel oping and certificating the 331- 500 for the 777, and is anxious to find other applications for the unit. Garrett chief project engineer Ronald Holder says: "One of the reasons we picked the 331-500 [for the 777] was that we had some pretty clever ideas about how it would work for both Soviet CRS update deal for IBM Soviet national carrier Aer-oflot and US computer giant IBM have agreed on the devel opment' of computerised reser vation and cargo-handling sys tems for the airline. The projected computer res ervation system (CRS) devel opment forms part of a larger IBM business package with the Soviet Union. IBM says: "We have reached agreement in principle with the Ministry of Aviation for a pas senger and cargo system", but the company declined to give details of the project. Developing a reservation sys tem for Aeroflot poses IBM a considerable task, whether or not it decides to develop the software itself, or chooses to contract it out. Aeroflot has a rudimentary computerised booking system, although its overall approach to seat reservations is still highly inefficient. .The underlying technology behind any system proposed by IBM will have to meet Western export restrictions, as overseen by the West's technology- transfer watchdogs COCOM. IBM says it will ensure that any proposed system will meet restrictions, and points out that recently there has been a con siderable relaxation on technol ogy controls. One possible IBM contender to provide primary processing for an Aeroflot CRS is the IBM 3090. Models of this machine have already been approved for export to Czechoslovakia. • applications. We certainly didn't want to develop two APUs at the same time, and in the same power class." The 331-500 will be rated at 895kW (l,200shp) on the launch version of the 777, the "A" market transcontinental version of the aircraft, but the unit has been designed to cover the whole 777 family envisaged by Boeing and could grow to around l,200kW. This would be enough to service the MD-12 and any future growth versions, such as the stretched MD-12XX. The 331-500 is based on the same core as earlier versions but with several modifications. The unit will run with tur bine inlet temperatures 40°C higher than the A340's 331-350, but any effect on component life will be offset by the use of single-crystal materials and by cooling the first-stage blades and vanes. Holder says: "The metal tem peratures will be the same or lower than previous engines. The life of this turbine will be longer than any other turbine we have produced." To improve maintainability, the unit is built in four separate modules and has all the external accessory components grouped into five distinct "clusters", each relating to a single system — lubrication, fuel or pneu matic, for example. These can be removed and replaced without disturbing other components — eliminat ing the search for an individual system fault as an aircraft is waiting to depart. Robert Choulet, president of Allied Signal Engine Group, says: "The majority of reliability problems have dealt with things that we hang on the engine, like oil pumps, cooling fans, starter motor clutches and so on — things that have started to fail before the main power section. "Our idea was to put a num ber of components in one mod ule which can be removed and taken back to the shop, where you have time to inspect it," he adds. • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 6 - 12 February, 1991
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