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Old 23rd May 2008, 01:45
  #1203 (permalink)  
barit1
 
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The fuel system engineers will follow this train of thought, I trust, based on the difference between volume-unit and mass-unit measurements. If I follow that AAIB reading of the data correctly:

1) Both fuel metering valves opened per (initially) autothrottle, and later manual command. Thus I'd exonerate all upstream control hardware and software.

2) The flow metering valve is typically a volume metering device, calibrated such that when a fuel has known density and BTU content, then a calibrated mass flow (and thus BTU rate) is delivered to the burner.

3) However - fuel flow, measured typically by mass-flow devices (someone update me if this is not the case on 777s), in this instance shows little or no increase in mass flow.

The only conclusion I can draw is the properties of fuel reaching the burner were quite abnormal, likely a high volumetric percentage of air or vapor, with drastically reduced BTU delivery.

And the next question I must ask is: What was the indicated metering valve position, and the indicated mass flowmeter signal, during the latter part of descent before the throttle increase was commanded?
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