MOSCOW. Feb 26 (Interfax-AVN) - An improved variety of the D- 27 new-generation aircraft engine will be ready before the end of 2004, a competent source in the Russian defense industry told Interfax-Military News Agency on Wednesday.
The engine will incorporate an upgraded propfan developed by the Progress design bureau that is based in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia, the source said.
"Work to improve the SV-27 propfan will not affect aerodynamics and will not require adjustment of main components of the AN-70 military transport plane, for which D-27 is designed," the source said.
According to him, the projects being implemented by the Aerosila research and production enterprise in the interests of creating and improving the D-27 engine's coaxial fan and hydro- mechanical fan regulator are behind the work on the engine itself only due to insufficient funding.
"The run of the propfan has reached 736 hours with the density resource of 1,000 hours. A list of events has been worked out following the Omsk accident (the crash of an AN-70 near the Siberian city of Omsk in 2001 - Interfax-AVN). All events have taken place, and their results have been taken into account. After the accident, the propfan was in operation for 173 hours without any claims. Work on the controllable reversing gear is scheduled for 2003. The main goal is to put controlled reversal into practice and decrease the noise level during take-off and landing," the expert said.
During the tests, the engine's life before early removal grew seven times and time before fault detection grew 3.5 times. Measures have been taken to fix all faults, and their efficiency has been confirmed by bench and flight tests, the source said.
He stressed that ICAO noise requirements do not concern military planes. Nevertheless, the AN-70 generally meets noise requirements of Chapter III of ICAO standards. The noise level exceeds the limits only during the landing of short airstrips, but measures to adjust the engines to requirements of Chapter IV of ICAO standards have been worked out and are being taken, the source concluded.