The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 304

2 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1985. Clif ftllnnla Soumal AT) CONSTITITION Mil Qiiaoircd ltotas uanalS into Mo FaQ? Allison Gas Turbine eager for dive into $22 billion plane engine market I r5f jlLa 0 f-Z. rcx 1 "I Pi rz xz AV)i I A- I sY A JjsV. A il As Allison's Novick acknowledged, his engine will weigh more. But he added that it will use less fuel than GE's design.

And he predicted the fears of maintenance problems will prove unfounded. "Our design goal is to set 30,000 mean time hours (of flight time) between schedule maintenance NASA's Sievers predicted that both approaches eventually will find their way into commercial applications. The jockeying among engine makers comes at a time when the normally high-stakes poker game among the air frame manufacturers has been raised to an even higher level. At stake is the enormous market for the replacement aircraft for the workhorse Boeing 727 and the McDonald Douglas DC-9. Boeing, the largest commercial air frame manufacturer in the world, decided earlier this year to suspend its plans to put a new-generation, 150-seat aircraft onto the market by 1989.

The company said propfan technol- ogy looked promising enough for it to wait until the new engine was available in 1991, meaning it wouldn't be able to deliver the plane to airlines until mid-1992 at -the soonest. McDonnell Douglas is planning propfan tests, too, but it has hedged its bet by planning a jet-powered variation of its current production MD-80 model, dubbed the MD-89, which could be available for delivery in 1989. Meanwhile, Airbus, the European plane maker, is gambling that propfan backers are too optimistic about when the engine will be ready. It says GE, Allison and Pratt Whitney are all underestimating the remaining propfan noise and vibration problems that will have to be solved. Airbus officials have said they don't look for prop-fan's introduction until the late 1990s, giving the plane manufacturer a big head start with its new 150-seater, the A-320, which is scheduled to be ready for service in the spring of 1988.

Airbus has already gained A-320 orders from Pan American World Airways from among the U.S. flag carriers. Airlines buying the Airbus A-320 will have the option of choosing the latest refinement of GE's CFM56 engine or a all new design, the V2500, which will be built by International Aero Engines AG, a consortium made up of Pratt Whitney, Rolls-Royce and smaller German, French and Japanese engine makers. Delta Air Lines Inc. of Atlanta had hoped to take delivery of the first of at least 100 150-seat jets starting this year as replacements for its fleet of 102 three-' engined Boeing 727s.

Those plans kept getting pushed, back, however, as the airline awaited the results of new technology and promises of fuel savings. Now it looks as if Delta will wait for the propfan generation jets before making its big order. Don P. Het-terman, Delta's senior vice president for technical operations, said that would require an order commitment probably in 1987. Hetterman gave no indication whether Delta is leaning toward one air frame manufacturer, but the fact that the airline hasn't made any commitments to Airbus, even though the European firm has been taking orders for some time, speak for itself.

Delta's decision to wait for the 1990s plane amounts to a calculated gamble that fuel prices won't surge in price before the relatively inefficient 727s are replaced. That move is looking good for the time being, judging by the plunge in oil prices last week resulting from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting's decision to maintain market share even if it means cutting prices. PROPFAN RESEARCH: There's little question in the industry that this is airline engine of the future. The only question is, when will it become practical? In above photo Hamilton Standard engineers test a fan blade at an Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio. In left photo, Lockheed-Georgia engineer Jerry Jenness (left) and Calcusearch technician Scott McAfee in project at Marietta plant.

By Chuck Hawkins Staff Writer 4 With three entrenched players already battling for commercial airliner engine sales, a unit of General Motors Corp. is hinting that It may decide to enter the fray in a big way. The move by GM's Allison Gas Turbine division would take a commitment of at least $1.5 billion, ac-' cording to industry observers. But Allison officials say they can convince GM's board of directors to make the plunge, adding that they think they have a winner with their new propfan engine. Propfans are promising to be the next revolutionary breakthrough in the airline industry.

Through the marriage of existing turbofan technology with newly designed propellers, propfans are expected to cut airliner fuel use by as much as 35 to 50 percent Existing turboprop engines have three or four straight propeller blades. Propfans likely will have two separate rows of blades with eight to 12 thin blades on each, and they will rotate in opposite directions. The blades also will look quite different: They'll have a swept-tip design similar to a scimitar. vlf the fuel-saving promises come true, it could moan a major reshuffling in market shares for engine makers, who have spent the last 30 years making steady but incremental improvements in existing jet engine technology. The Pratt Whitney subsidiary of United Technology Corp.

now holds a 51-percent share of what one analyst estimates to be a $22 billion-a-year airliner engine market. The jet engine division of General Electric Co. is in second place with a 32 percent share, and Rolls-Royce Ltd. of Britain is the other major player, with 11 percent of the market many analysts questioning whether there's going to be enough business to allow all three firms to shoulder the enormous research and development costs associated with new engine projects, the prospects of Allison backed by the deep pockets of GM entering the market has quickly become the talk of the industry. "Given that we've.

been given the go-ahead for a demonstrator, that usually means we've already passed the major decision point at GM," said Allen S. Novick, chief project engineer for advanced large engines at Al-. lison. Engine makers are still several months away from delivering propfan prototypes to airplane manufacturers, and it will be 1992 at the soonest before passengers are carried in a propfan plane, but the race is quickly heating up. "We're past the stage where its pie-in-the-sky.

There's a lot of work left to be done, but there are no apparent show stoppers yet," said G. Keith Sievers, head of the advanced turboprop project office at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Lewis research center in Cleveland, Ohio. If Congress continues funding for NASA's propfan research program, the agency will have spent about 1200 million by 1990 to help companies design and test the new engine, Sievers said. Lockheed-Georgia Co. of Marietta, which is testing one version of the propfan for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, recently moved up by six Boeing 727 next summer and on a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 in 1987.

Allison officials say they are negotiating with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, but have signed no test flight contracts yet. Not only will GE gain a psychological edge if it meets the Boeing test flight schedule and gets its prop-fan in the air first, but the company seems to have taken the lead in winning the hearts and minds of airline executives because its engine has less complex mechanical innards than the Allison approach. GE calls its propfan an unducted fan. It is what is known as a gearless design. The front of the engine is similar to regular jet engines, with a compressor and turbine assembly.

The hot gasses developed in the firing stage are directed back over the two rows of eight propellers, which are suspended by bearings and essentially free wheeling. The limiting factor in that design is the speed of the propeller blades if they spin too fast, they could create sonic booms. In simple terms, that means GE's propfan turbines will be forced to run at less than optimal speed, costing it some fuel efficiency. The Allison approach involves more hardware, including a new 13,000 horsepower gearbox. By using gearing, Allison's turbine can run as fast as needed, 10,000 revolutions per minute, while the propeller turns at 1,500 RPM.

months its projected first flight test date to the fall of 1986. GM's Allison division is providing the engine for that test, which will be mounted on a modified Gulf-stream jet manufactured in Savannah. William E. Arndt, program manager for Lockheed-Georgia, said he doubts that his company will attempt to re-enter the commercial aircraft market, based on the losses incurred in the now-ended L-1011 wide-body jet program. But he said the knowledge gained by the engine research at Lockheed-Georgia may be applied in later generations of military transport planes built by Lockheed.

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