MOSCOW. May 8 (Interfax-AVN) - The first prototype of the AI- 222 aircraft engine developed by the Progress design bureau in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia, will be assembled and submitted for bench tests in late September, the engine's chief designer Eduard Bulavin said on Wednesday.
"The entire test bench of the AI-222 engines must be produced on a serial scheme," Bulavin told Interfax-Military News Agency.
Mass production of the engine will be handled by Moscow's Salyut engine-building enterprise in Russia and Zaporizhzhia's Motor Sich JS in Ukraine.
Salyut currently manufactures low-pressure turbines, exhaust devices and second circuit enclosures and supplies them to Motor Sich, which manufactures the gas generator, hull with the drive box, high-pressure container, combustion chamber and high- pressure turbine on its own. First components of the engine are to be supplied to Progress for assembly circa July this year.
The first two AI-222 engines are likely to be delivered to the Sokol aircraft plant in Nizhny Novgorod in the second quarter of 2003 for their subsequent installation in YA-130 combat trainers.
Bulavin stressed that "state tests of the AI-222 engine are to be completed 2004." According to some reports state tests of the YAK-130 prototype are to be completed in 2005.
The price of the AI-222 will be lower than that of the Larzac engine that costs about USD1m. Larzac engines are powering MIG-AT trainers.
The AI-222 engine for the YAK-130 combat trainer is to have a thrust of 2,500kg in the maximum take-off mode, while fuel consumption is to total 0.64 kilogram per kilogramforce per hour. Its thrust is to amount to 1,450 kilogram in the maximum mode on an altitude of 5 kilometers, 300 kilogram in the economical mode on an altitude of 10 kilometers and specific power consumption of 0.875 per kilogramforce per hour. Moisture-free weight of the engine is 400 kilogram.