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Old 14th Aug 2014, 18:24
  #16 (permalink)  
tdracer
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Everett, WA
Age: 68
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Check Airman

When you add fuel to the burner "too fast", you get a condition in the burner called "Thermal Choking" - in short it starts limiting the amount of airflow that the burner can flow. That in turn back-pressures the compressor and can lead to compressor stall/surge.

In the pre-FADEC days, the hydromechanical controls contained complex sets of cams, levers, bellows, etc. that controlled how much fuel could be flowed to the burner, depending on things such as burner pressure and high rotor speed (N2 or N3). The old hydromechanical controls were basically complex mechanical computers. When we first went to FADEC, the FADEC software basically just mimicked what those cams and levers did. As the FADEC systems became more sophisticated, the accel/decel fuel flow limits have become more sophisticated, with more inputs and variables. But the basics haven't changed.

The modern engines are least responsive at or near idle - and the lower the idle the less responsive they tend to be. Minimum ground idle is typically set as low as possible for a number of reasons including minimizing stopping distances. As a result engines can be very lazy to accelerate from ground idle. Once the engine is up to a mid-power condition, throttle response is typically quite good.
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