Pratt & Whitney has reached a milestone in the development of its new geared turbofan engine after completing assembly of the first PW1524G scheduled to power Bombardier's CSeries aircraft.
The engine is now scheduled for delivery to Pratt & Whitney's facility in West Palm Beach, Florida later this month for the start of an eight engine validation and certification programme.
P&W plans to use the eight test engines during 24 months of testing to support certification and first flight of the CSeries in 2012. The manufacturer recently completed core testing of the geared turbofan, and has also performed critical module-level testing for the engine that includes running the fan drive gear system through a simulation of more than 60,000 takeoffs and landings. P&W's module testing also involved hundreds of hours of testing on the low and high-pressure compressor.
"We have worked closely with Pratt & Whitney engineers over the past two years to optimise engine performance as we integrated this powerplant into our airplane design," says Bombardier vice president of commercial aircraft programmes Ben Boehm. "We are very pleased with the progress of the engine programme to date and that Pratt & Whitney has completed first engine assembly on time."
First delivery of the CSeries is scheduled for 2013.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
