FADEC & Engines lives

[VORTIME]

Hi there,

What do you guys think FADEC will do to increase/decrease engine lives? My personal opinion is that every pilot thinks they're a pro, but half are below average. Therefore, by protecting the engine from those who don't manage it as well as a computer can (adjusting parametres by the second), surely one could except many more engines to reach their TBO?

VT

[IO540]

I agree that FADEC should improve engine life, if you assume a poorly trained or ignorant pilot.

The negative is that GA is not packed with great (or even half good) electronics engineers and whether they can make a piece of electronics last 2000hrs is doubtful. Look at Thielert.

[acebaxter]

FADEC is a tool we have available to use. Nothing more or less. You can still get a hot start, hung start with FADEC. You can still exceed engine limitations with FADEC. The bottom line is the pilot. Training, experience, attitude will save more engines that a computer.

[ShyTorque]

As the saying goes: "make something idiot proof and suddenly up pops a better class of idiot...".

[Kengineer-130]

the one item i am AMAZED is not in every piston engined aircraft is a wideband lambda sensor :ugh:- Such a relativly simple bit of kit, used on many high performance and indeed low performance car engines to moniter engine burn efficiency, just learning a few simple figures ( ideal stoich figures for various condiotions etc) would stop a vast amount of engine wear and prevent people running engines dangerously lean :ok:

Infact, I amazed at the level of technology applied in most GA aircraft, they seem to be 30 years behind most cars :(.

[IO540]

The comparison with car engines comes up often.

It doesn't stack up because a normal car engine runs at 10-20% power most of the time. Even at 70mph, the average family saloon (say, 120mph top speed) is running at about 40% power. In comparison, the aero engine runs at 65% for hours, and many people run them at 75%. The idiots run them higher. You can't do that with a car because your license would not last the journey.

In competitions, car engines fall apart regularly, but you don't get to see them changing the engines on TV ;)

The aero engine has to be at least an order of magnitude more reliable than a car engine, just to be vaguely acceptable. If you use an adapted car engine in a plane, you get a Thielert, and you get whole fleets of DA40s in which only half the planes are usable at any one time.

Oxygen sensors do pack up regularly. I've had a couple go over the years. One would need some redundancy there.

I am all in favour of technology and cockpit automation (and disagree with the "better class of idiots" type statements) but it needs to work, and to date the record of implementing technology in GA (other than avionics) is pretty lousy.

It also doesn't take much to teach a pilot how to operate/manage an engine correctly, provided it is properly instrumented. On the scale of flying it is really not a big deal.

[Andy_RR]

Exhaust oxygen sensors won't last three seconds in the presence of lead, so until we get unleaded AVGAS, wide-band sensors are useless technology as far as aviation is concerned.

A