Airbus Helicopters, formerly Eurocopter, is famous for kicking in the teeth of America’s jet-powered helicopter manufacturers. In fact, so great was the disparity in technical performance that even the U.S. military had to cave in and buy machines from the absurdly named “American Eurocopter.” Now it seems that Airbus is gunning for our piston-powered market as well. From “New High Compression Engine”:
Airbus Helicopters has successfully completed the first flight test of the high-compression engine demonstrator aircraft at around 3pm on Friday, November 6th, at Marignane Airport.
“The first result of the 30 minutes flight confirms the advantages of new-technology high-compression piston engines for rotorcraft in offering reduced emissions; up to 50% lower fuel consumption depending on duty cycle, nearly doubled range and enhanced operations in hot and high conditions”, said Tomasz Krysinski, Head of Research and Innovation at Airbus Helicopters.
Integrated into an H120, the 4.6-liter high-compression piston engine incorporates numerous technologies already applied on advanced self-ignition engines, and runs on the widely-available kerosene fuel used in aviation engines. Its V8 design has the two sets of cylinders oriented at a 90 deg. angle to each other, with a high-pressure (1800 bar) common-rail direct injection and one turbocharger per cylinder bank.
Other features include fully-machined aluminum blocks and titanium connecting rods, pistons and liners made of steel, liquid-cooling and a dry sump management method for the lubricating motor oil as used on aerobatic aircraft and race cars.
English-language translation: We stuffed a diesel engine into a standard jet-powered helicopter and now it can fly twice as far on one tank.
Note that the five-seat H120 (formerly EC120) is roughly comparable in size and capability to the Bell JetRanger.
Separately, what does it say about a U.S. industry when a company using French labor can take over the market?
“offering reduced emissions” – wonder if they picked some tricks up from VW on this.
I couldn’t find who was making the engine for them, could you? Can you ask on the floor at NBAA?
It’s Austro Engine’s AE440 .
Who says they’ve taken over the market? It’s a test flight, for goodness sake.
MarkD: “the market” in the original post refers to the turbine-powered helicopter market.
That’s amazing. I thought that, for helicopters, turbines had insanely better performance. I wonder if they can make a smaller version for light aircraft.
Turbines have worse performance, which is why the R44 can post such great numbers. When power required is more than about 250 hp, turbines have much better reliability. That’s why all but the smallest helicopters are turbine-powered.