GE's new plane engine 'tailored' in Bangalore

Bangalore: If Bansidhar Phansalkar and his team of 500 aviation engineers have their way, the shape of commercial flying could be quite different in the not-too-distant future, with jet engines sitting on the tail instead of the wings and sporting old-fashioned fan blades.
The physics of aeroplane engines has remained more or less the same since the first jet engine was built in the US in 1942 by General Electric. But Phansalkar and his team at GE Aviation's India engineering operations here are out to change that with their unducted engines, which promise to be 30-35% more fuel efficient and cheaper to manufacture and operate.
"We can be ready in the next five to six years," Phansalkar said on the sidelines of the GE TechFest, the $170 billion-plus engineering giant's annual show-and-tell R&D event at the GE John F Welch Technology Centre (JFWTC), here last week.
"There is a lot of activity going on here on the unducted or the open rotor engine in which AirBus has shown interest," the senior aviation technologist told DNA. Rolls-Royce and NASA were also involved in the project, he added.
The open rotor engine places the blades of the jet engine outside the casing, mixing the efficiency of turbo-propeller engines with the power of jet engines.
GE had tried this out in the 1980s but could not push the technology for various reasons. Now, with oil prices once again at their highs, interest in it has increased.
Thanks to work done by Phansalkar and his team, which is involved in very high-end analytics, the unducted fan engine is close to commercial realty.
21/09/09 C Chitti Pantulu/Daily News & Analysis

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2009, Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2009, New Sep 2009