TR Propulsion Systems

[No Name]

Did Azra enter mass production yet? if i'm remember correctly it was planned to enter praduction some time this year.

 

[Kartal1]

The Hybrid solution is very impressive, and when I look at the numbers it should be a no brainer. There are however somethings that only the wise know from experience, so I assume that may be why we haven't swapped to Hybrid solution.

But I don't see why they can't have several prototypes and test them thoroughly while still acquiring some standard conventional ones.

I know that diversifying is more expensive for us, but it is necessary to be able to change mindset as well.

I think this could be an example of one of those old doctrins that needs to be challenged and changed or at least battlefield tested @Kartal1

I am also on the opinion that it will be good to explore the option. It's just that I am not so confident in MKE making it work as intended.

 

[Nilgiri]

F404 and F414 are the epitome of how military turbine engines can be made to be reliable.

The F404 has a version called F412 with a very large inlet fan. This is a non afterburning engine specifically made for A-12 Avenger 2 plane. This engine developed very high thrust due to the large fan it utilised. In F414, they used a similar but comparatively smaller fan than the one used in F412 but larger than the one in F404. This fan provided a lot of air to flow through the compression and combustion section. To accommodate this extra air flow and sustain efficient burn, accordingly, they had to enlarge the diameter of the f412’s and F414’s combustion chambers. This way they were able to achieve 13000lbf dry thrust from the f414 which had essentially the same dimensions as f404, apart from the larger fan and bigger combustor. This was called a “trapped vortex combustor”.

A-12 Avenger 2
View attachment 69491
Whence the A-12 project was cancelled so was F412 engine. But it paved the way for f414.

With the EDE (Enhanced DurabilityEngine) version, F414 has gone through an upgrade of materials and aerodynamic design in it’s HP Turbine stage, allowing it to go hotter without problems and by reducing HP compressor stage by one from 7 to 6 it was made possible to lower SFC and improve durability by 3 times.

The EPE (Enhanced Performance Engine) version of F414 has been furnished with a totally new Fan, Core and Turbine section that gave a 20% increase to thrust level, achieving 26400lbf with AB.

GE has also been conducting experiments on F414, successfully, by replacing LP turbines with CMC materials.

I only hope that at TEI, our engineers, being part of GE family, are making note of these innovations and will in time, apply them to our own engines too.

Love your posts

A-12 takes me back to old times with other buddies, we used to chat about it all the time.

Really genesis of GE arc here, is with the large Human resource acquiring and organisation done w.r.t the F110 program in the 1970s. How this intersects with the Pentagon analysis being done at the time regd program allocations/ecosystems regd the F-111 vs F-14 (there was an earlier synthesis of much larger carriers able to handle a near F-111 sized a/c before it diverged into F-14 to make use of conventional sized and existing allocated carriers etc).....that pratt could not be given in monolithic way (i.e whole point to bring GE huge capital to bear, though it was more civvy oriented to that point). But one will always notice the F-111 and F-14 are tied at hip in lot of things as result (this was argument given for TF-30 for F-14 originally).

But the GE arc investment was notably seen in 1980s with both the F-15/16 powerplant arcs and also TF30 being replaced by GE F110 as well.

This paid off in all kind of ways (versus pratt and also what you mention here with ease of transitioning 404 to 412 and 414) downstream to make GE a potent force in military turbojet/fan powerplants. Things go relatively tic tac toe given the earlier project expertise developed by the various teams.