Abstract
The powerplant is the part of an aircraft that converts fuel into thrust. As such, it is also a part of the aircraft that is potentially very hazardous in event of a failure, and is generally isolated from the main aircraft body by a firewall. Therefore, airworthiness codes are designed to minimise this risk, and ensure that in the event of failure, there is no unacceptable damage to the rest of the aircraft. For the purposes of this book, the powerplant will be one of three main possibilities: a gas turbine engine, a propeller driven by a gas turbine, or a piston engine driving one or more propellers. This chapter concerns itself with discussion of airworthiness codes, principles and best practices to ensure airworthiness of everything forward of the firewall.
Chariots that shall move with unspeakable force without any living creature to stir them. Likewise an instrument may be made to fly withall if one sits in the midst of the instrument, and do turn an engine, by which the wings, being artificially composed, may beat the air after the manner of a flying bird.
Roger Bacon, 13th Century
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- 1.
These tests are normally conducted with chickens or turkeys, since they are readily available. There is an urban legend that somebody, somewhere, once tried to conduct this with a frozen chicken, without first thawing it, and as a result destroyed a prototype jet engine. The author has never seen any evidence that this actually happened—but just in case, please take this as a warning to always fully thaw frozen poultry before either cooking it, or firing it into a gas turbine engine intake.
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It is tempting when seeing apparently very carefully calculated values listed in SI units within airworthiness standards to assume considerable research behind those figures. In this case, the values correspond to semi-arbitrary values of 6 and 9 inches set many years ago, but subsequently found to be satisfactory.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Gratton, G. (2015). Powerplant Airworthiness. In: Initial Airworthiness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11409-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11409-5_9
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11409-5
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