Swift 100R is now ASTM

[Paul Thomas]

4 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Agreed, but if we're going to be precise, we should stop referring to the "big bore" engines as being the hurdle. The hurdle is high performance GTSIO/TSIO engines.  As far as bore is concerned, there is a 0.125" difference in bore size between most horizontally opposed aero engines over 200hp, with the exception of the Continental 360 which is smaller by more than a half inch smaller than the others. The issue has nothing to do with "big bore."  I think the point that Rich was making is that the 8:1 CR, 200hp, Lyc IO360's 1.8 horsepower per cubic inch is at the top of the hp/displacement scale as for NA aeroengines. 

Engine         Bore size

Lyc 360        5.125"

Lyc 540        5.125"

Lyc 720        5.125"

Con 360      4.438"

Con 520      5.25"

Con 550      5.25"

I'm getting lost. I thought the Lycoming IO360 angle engine needs 100LL/G100UL (for the purpose of this question, G100UL doesn't have material compatibility issues)  because other fuels can't safely be run. Is 100R good to go for our angle valve engines (parallel one have more options)?

Are only the turbo engines left without a solution if 100R works?

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, varlajo said:

I hope GAMI survives the G100UL fiasco.. 

have you seen George lately? He makes me look like a teenager. 

[GeeBee]

2 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

I’ve been in aviation for over 40 years. I’ve been hearing the same thing you just said the entire time. There have been quite a few attempts to do what you said. Porsche and Mercedes both tried and failed. There are actually quite a few certified diesel engines, but few are sold. 
 

We look at our current engines differently. I see engines that have been optimized for 85 years. And you see a stale design. There are few modern engines out there that will do what our aircraft engines will do. Just look at the horsepower most modern high performance auto engines make at 2500 RPM. Few if any will exceed what modern aircraft engines will do. And they will probably use more fuel doing it.

All of our aircraft engines could easily be made to run on any unleaded fuel, but their performance will be a bit less. You can’t take an engine that was designed and tuned to run on 100 octane fuel and wave a magic wand and make it run the same on a lower octane fuel.

If you asked Continental to design a clean sheet 200HP engine that will run on UL94, I would bet it would look just like our current engines except it would be about 400 cu in and weigh about 20 Lbs. More.

I disagree. The engines in my boat is 7.3L (454 cid) MPI. Multi-port injection, roller cam and lifters. 5 years earlier the same engine without MPI produced 250 hp, this engine produces 310 hp. They don't make this engine anymore, why? Because the 6.7L engine produces 380hp on the same octane fuel Smaller, more power less fuel consumption. 

The current fuel injection on both Continental and Lycoming simply blasts fuel continuously. Rather than timing the injection with the cylinder like an MPI system. We could reduce our fuel consumption by 30% with a computerized injection system. Mixture control would be a thing of the past as the engines would always run lean. 

I am not blaming the manufacturers themselves, they have had to deal with a moribund FAA. But we now have pure electronic ignition STCs put forth by companies with a lot less engineering and administrative capability than the manufacturers. If they can do it, so should Lycoming and Continental...a long time ago.

They don't have build new engines, they need to re-invent the spark and fuel delivery systems of existing engines and that could have been done long ago.

[N201MKTurbo]

42 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

Swift has been diddling around with 100R for a long time.  Have they said anything about the shelf life of it when it sits in fuel and wing tanks baking in 100 F sun? (or hotter in Az...)?

Glad you said (or hotter) cause we are still waiting for that 100 F day.

[N201MKTurbo]

6 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

I disagree. The engines in my boat is 7.3L (454 cid) MPI. Multi-port injection, roller cam and lifters. 5 years earlier the same engine without MPI produced 250 hp, this engine produces 310 hp. They don't make this engine anymore, why? Because the 6.7L engine produces 380hp on the same octane fuel Smaller, more power less fuel consumption. 

The current fuel injection on both Continental and Lycoming simply blasts fuel continuously. Rather than timing the injection with the cylinder like an MPI system. We could reduce our fuel consumption by 30% with a computerized injection system. Mixture control would be a thing of the past as the engines would always run lean. 

I am not blaming the manufacturers themselves, they have had to deal with a moribund FAA. But we now have pure electronic ignition STCs put forth by companies with a lot less engineering and administrative capability than the manufacturers. If they can do it, so should Lycoming and Continental...a long time ago.

They don't have build new engines, they need to re-invent the spark and fuel delivery systems of existing engines and that could have been done long ago.

Those HP numbers you are quoting are at 6000 RPM. We need an engine that makes power at 2500 RPM. Or we need a troublesome and heavy gearbox. What HP does your boat motor make at 2500 RPM? And what does it weigh? And what is the fuel flow?

[varlajo]

57 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

have you seen George lately? He makes me look like a teenager. 

Yeah. There's that.. 

[GeeBee]

1 hour ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Those HP numbers you are quoting are at 6000 RPM. We need an engine that makes power at 2500 RPM. Or we need a troublesome and heavy gearbox. What HP does your boat motor make at 2500 RPM? And what does it weigh? And what is the fuel flow?

Nope, 4200 RPM. Weighs 12K at cruise 3600 rpm, 18gph/engine.

[1980Mooney]

2 hours ago, GeeBee said:

I disagree. The engines in my boat is 7.3L (454 cid) MPI. Multi-port injection, roller cam and lifters. 5 years earlier the same engine without MPI produced 250 hp, this engine produces 310 hp. They don't make this engine anymore, why? Because the 6.7L engine produces 380hp on the same octane fuel Smaller, more power less fuel consumption. 

The current fuel injection on both Continental and Lycoming simply blasts fuel continuously. Rather than timing the injection with the cylinder like an MPI system. We could reduce our fuel consumption by 30% with a computerized injection system. Mixture control would be a thing of the past as the engines would always run lean. 

I am not blaming the manufacturers themselves, they have had to deal with a moribund FAA. But we now have pure electronic ignition STCs put forth by companies with a lot less engineering and administrative capability than the manufacturers. If they can do it, so should Lycoming and Continental...a long time ago.

They don't have build new engines, they need to re-invent the spark and fuel delivery systems of existing engines and that could have been done long ago.  

You are mixing partial throttle with full throttle.  "We could reduce our fuel consumption by 30% with a computerized injection system."  No way.  At full throttle it is basic chemistry.  The fuel has a given amount of energy.  At 14.7 to 1 you are burning everything.

[Ryan ORL]

Just extrapolating from what I know of modern car engine design, I suspect more modern cylinder head (combustion chamber) design could buy a bit of extra detonation resistance versus our older designs.

The obvious improvement though would be a full modern EFI system.  Without the stupid fixed spark timing and uneven fuel delivery, you could effectively eliminate “the red box” entirely.  Easy enough to electronically pull timing when cylinder temperatures get high, or when lugging the engine at lower RPMs.

For getting a lot out of lower octane fuel, though, I think the really difficult thing is the air cooling requirement and the vast operating temperature range that implies.  Water cooling an engine really helps avoid hot spots and even the design of that matters a lot… Chevy squeezed a bit more out of the SBC (and was able to up the compression ratio) when they went to reverse cooling (heads first), although they later abandoned that for other reasons.

[Ibra]

7 hours ago, redbaron1982 said:

Does anyone know what's the blend they are using

No idea but they already have unleaded car racing fuels with high octane that rely on "oxygenation", for a long time now...

For aviation certification, if they stick with this route they will have tough time passing PAFI tests or ASTM tests regarding fuel stability and oxidation (how long it stays in tank) as well as pressure and vapour lock limits (pump, pipes)

It would be interesting to know what "they have for us", maybe their fuel will need some additives depending on the intended usage (turbos, temperature, high altitude)? flying or storage? 

"Winter Avgas vs Summer Avgas with mandatory calendar change" 

Edited 10 hours ago by Ibra

[Ibra]

7 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

Swift has been diddling around with 100R for a long time.  Have they said anything about the shelf life of it when it sits in fuel and wing tanks baking in 100 F sun? (or hotter in Az...)?

They did leave it for 3.5 years now in aircraft tanks, this seems to tick all of the boxes, they think composition could remain the same for 5 years inside aircraft tanks, however, they need more data and time to support such claim...

For aircraft, they have to show that anyway if it's an industry standard or stc'ed fuel, I think the requirement is something like 2 years when ASTM and 6 months when STC for "stability and oxidation" testing in aircraft.

ASTM also test for "stability and testing" in trucks, containers and pumps, I think this is where 5 years matters more? if I am not flying aircraft for 6 months, I would have other worries than draining fuel.

Not sure if this is guaranteed when fuels are mixed? most of the proposals seems to aim for ability to mix with 100LL and remain stable (however, they shy away from ability to mix with other 100UL fuels).

I would be interested in shelf life of VPRacing 100E fuel as it may have unstable composition and may have high risk of oxidation and unstability (car fuels specs and variants are guaranteed for 3 months or 6 months, they won't last for say 2 years or 5 years unless one adds lot of additives and stabilisers)

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Ibra

[GeeBee]

8 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

You are mixing partial throttle with full throttle.  "We could reduce our fuel consumption by 30% with a computerized injection system."  No way.  At full throttle it is basic chemistry.  The fuel has a given amount of energy.  At 14.7 to 1 you are burning everything.

With a FADEC system you are not burning at 14.7 to 1. You are burning much leaner. Except when under severe load (like take-off) a FADEC is always burning lean side of peak. How lean? Just a tad rich of tripping the knock sensor.

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

With a FADEC system you are not burning at 14.7 to 1. You are burning much leaner. Except when under severe load (like take-off) a FADEC is always burning lean side of peak. How lean? Just a tad rich of tripping the knock sensor.

I have a red lever that does that.

[GeeBee]

7 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

I have a red lever that does that.

I assure you a FADEC with a knock sensor is much better at it than you. It is the reason for instance you can burn any fuel in an automobile even if the manufacturer says otherwise. Yeah, you won't get the full performance of the engine design, but it demonstrates the capability of FADEC.

The Big 2 in aircraft don't need new engines, they need new engine controls. 

[N201MKTurbo]

4 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

I assure you a FADEC with a knock sensor is much better at it than you. It is the reason for instance you can burn any fuel in an automobile even if the manufacturer says otherwise. Yeah, you won't get the full performance of the engine design, but it demonstrates the capability of FADEC.

The Big 2 in aircraft don't need new engines, they need new engine controls. 

They have both built and certified them. Nobody buys them.

[Shadrach]

17 hours ago, hazek said:

Any of these engines are dinosaurs and are the reason we are in this mess. Lycoming and Continental should be ashamed of themselves. Sitting on their laurels for over 60 years, zero innovation, zero willingness to invest in this market.. just squeezing out as much as possible for as little as possible for as long as possible. Pathetic.

I desperately hope it will be possible in a few years to replace the TIO-540 with a 6 cylinder Rotax or perhaps the Adept engine. The solution is not some new magic fuel, the solution is someone having some balls and investing into a new modern engine design and certifying it.

These engines are not a mess. They are actually an impressive combination of power, weight, reliability and specific fuel consumption.  The fixed-timing, ignition systems with which they were certified is the hurdle to utilizing different fuels.  All of the current Rotax models run on pump gas yet are turbocharged and running higher compression ratios than any of the normally aspirated legacy engines.

As far as innovation goes, this is what happens when the regulatory barriers to entering the market are perceived to be greater than the return.   This is not to say that no one can succeed by innovating in aviation, but it's easier and more profitable to take advantage of the regulatory hurdles by rolling up legacy companies and the doubling the pricing of existing products à la Hartzell Aviation.

 

[Shadrach]

57 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

I have a red lever that does that.

You can do it and I can do it. However, it took quite a while to get to that point.

 

2 hours ago, GeeBee said:

With a FADEC system you are not burning at 14.7 to 1. You are burning much leaner. Except when under severe load (like take-off) a FADEC is always burning lean side of peak. How lean? Just a tad rich of tripping the knock sensor.

I think you mean "just a tad lean" of tripping the knock sensor.

[Shadrach]

59 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

I have a red lever that does that.

We all do, but it's a lot to expect new 

 

11 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

You are mixing partial throttle with full throttle.  "We could reduce our fuel consumption by 30% with a computerized injection system."  No way.  At full throttle it is basic chemistry.  The fuel has a given amount of energy.  At 14.7 to 1 you are burning everything.

Close, but I don't think that actually true.  If it were, BFSC would not continue to drop at leaner efficiency ratios.

[redbaron1982]

I wonder if an "advisory" FADEC would be a first easy step based on NORSEE, monitoring all variables (rpm, crankshaft position, knocking sensor, cht, eht, fuel flow, mp, etc) and provide, for the current power requirement, ideal FF, RPM, MP. It would be up to the pilot to move the knobs, and for sure ignition advance would not be part of this... but maybe is a way to get the ball rolling...

[philiplane]

8 hours ago, Ibra said:

ASTM also test for "stability and testing" in trucks, containers and pumps, I think this is where 5 years matters more? if I am not flying aircraft for 6 months, I would have other worries than draining fuel.

ASTM doesn't "test" anything.

ASTM simply reviews the reports submitted by the organization seeking an ASTM rubber stamp. If they determine that the submission checks all the boxes it said it would check, you get the rubber stamp.

[EricJ]

3 hours ago, GeeBee said:

I assure you a FADEC with a knock sensor is much better at it than you. It is the reason for instance you can burn any fuel in an automobile even if the manufacturer says otherwise. Yeah, you won't get the full performance of the engine design, but it demonstrates the capability of FADEC.

Many engines make too much noise for knock sensors to be effective in all conditions.   Many auto engine ECU maps just know the conditions that will lead to knock or other bad things and adjust around them.   I'd suspect the valve trains alone in our engines are too noisy, plus the cylinders are mechanically isolated from each other, so effective knock sensing could be a really difficult thing to make work on most GA recip engines.

3 hours ago, GeeBee said:

The Big 2 in aircraft don't need new engines, they need new engine controls. 

Lycoming's iE2 has been around for a while but doesn't have many applications yet.   The Tecnam P2012 uses it, and I haven't heard much about operational experiences with it there yet.    https://www.lycoming.com/engines/ie2

[N201MKTurbo]

Everybody objects to de-tuning  their engine to make it run on unleaded avgas. But they have no issue using an ECU to automatically de-tune your engine so it will run on unleaded avgas.

[1980Mooney]

2 hours ago, Shadrach said:

We all do, but it's a lot to expect new 

 

Close, but I don't think that actually true.  If it were, BFSC would not continue to drop at leaner efficiency ratios.

Excess oxygen may slightly improve complete combustion but the bigger improvement comes from improved thermal efficiency.  Regardless you can already achieve that by twisting the Red Knob (or pull the Red Lever as @N201MKTurbo says) with our current engines.

[1980Mooney]

3 hours ago, GeeBee said:

I assure you a FADEC with a knock sensor is much better at it than you. It is the reason for instance you can burn any fuel in an automobile even if the manufacturer says otherwise. Yeah, you won't get the full performance of the engine design, but it demonstrates the capability of FADEC.

The Big 2 in aircraft don't need new engines, they need new engine controls. 

 

3 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

They have both built and certified them. Nobody buys them.

Exactly.  15 years ago Lycoming introduced the iE2 engine. 

Also if you think it is so easy look at the Orenda V-8 liquid cooled engine development.  It started as the Thunder Engine in the 1980's and then the Orenda in the 1990's. Then Texas Recip in the 2000's and TRACE in the 2010's.  No applications.  Lots of money wasted in 40 years.

iE2 Engine | Lycoming Aircraft | Lycoming Engines

Turbo charged 540 with electronic engine controls.  First experimental with the Lancair.  Then certified on the Tecnam Traveller P2012.  You won't find many still on the Lancair or anyone that likes it.  And Beechtalk reports that Cape Air put their entire fleet of Tecnam P2012 up for sale in May - reportedly the engine was an issue - heavy and expensive.  The iE2 has been a commercial failure.  There are no other installations in 15 years.

From 2010:  

Ready for takeoff: Lycoming’s iE2 — General Aviation News

Lycoming IE2: Incremental Technology - Aviation Consumer

By automotive standards, the IE2 is about on par sensor wise. But it doesn't need the oxygen sensor circuit nor the transmission controls found on modern cars to improve fuel economy. The basic inputs are venturi pressure and temperature for mass airflow calculation, MAP, induction temperature, CHT, TIT and RPM. For crankshaft and top dead center reference, the IE2 has two magnetic position sensors, one on the crank and one on the cam. They sense crank position by magnetically detecting a missing tooth in the gear train, but unlike Hall-effect sensors, they aren't powered, thus eliminating at least one failure point.

Speaking of power, its delivered to the engine via a dedicated dual-channel power box that can run the engine either from the aircraft bus or from the default position-a dedicated permanent magnet alternator installed on the accessory case. The engine is designed to run independently of aircraft electrics, although it doesn't have to. It has provisions for an additional alternators on the accessory case or via front-belt drive.

Starting with the air, gone is the traditional Bendix RSA throttle body and injector system. In its place is a throttle body that still has hard linkage to the power lever, but one that's equipped to measure mass airflow and temperature, with redundant temperature sensing capability, since air density and flow is such an important player in power setting. The engine control unit is housed in a single box the size of a thick netbook and is dual channel-either channel can run the engine. The ECUs use sensed throttle position as a target reference for the pilots power command, then the mass airflow data is used to fuel the engine accordingly by referring to a customizable look-up table and fine tuning that according to a feedback loop with programmed limits and protections.

The IE2 uses electronic pulse injectors whose reliability in automobile use has been raised to nearly failure-proof levels. These run from a common rail at a pressure of 3 bars or about 43 PSI.

This fueling option adds a measure of reliability because the

engine is set up to run each cylinder as an individual power unit-if one fails, either due to fuel or ignition, the other five will continue running as smoothly as the software can make them. The system is configured with return lines which circulate fuel as a hedge against vapor lock.

Ignition still terminates in two plugs per cylinder, but rather than mags or remote spark generation, each plug has its own direct-fire coil similar to the high-reliability type found on modern motorcycles. In automotive and motorcycle apps, direct-fire coils usually attach to the plug, but on the IE2, there’s no room for that. All of the coils-12 total-live in an array mounted on top of the engine where the fuel injection spider would otherwise be found. As you'd expect, the ECU channels cross control, so if one fails, the other can still fire at least one plug in each cylinder.

Edited 12 minutes ago by 1980Mooney

[201Mooniac]

31 minutes ago, EricJ said:

Lycoming's iE2 has been around for a while but doesn't have many applications yet.   The Tecnam P2012 uses it, and I haven't heard much about operational experiences with it there yet.    https://www.lycoming.com/engines/ie2

Are there STCs for this?  I didn't see any mention of them.  I would certainly consider it at overhaul time if I could use it on my IO-360.  If they are only looking to new production aircraft, I doubt this will get much traction.