PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Police helicopter crashes onto Glasgow pub
Old 10th Mar 2014, 13:31
  #2653 (permalink)  
puntosaurus
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Puntosaurus I completely disagree that the fuel system is flawed. It is designed to ensure a steady head of fuel to the engines when there are significant attitude changes but like all fuel systems it needs managing when the fuel states are low.
The AW109E power fuel system needs no attention when the fuel states are low, and will run down to unusable without any intervention if required.

I'm not trying to make a point about superiority of one manufacturer's system over another's. In fact there is a cheeky gotcha if you get a pump failure in the AW109E when the fuel state is low.

I'm just saying that it doesn't have to be the EC135 way. Even if you stick with the geometry of the 135 system, you could (as one poster has already suggested) have an 'auto' setting where the pump switches itself off when it runs dry, and re-engages when it is once again immersed in fuel. Or better still, you could simply design the pump to not care if it's running dry.