Updating the Helicopter Gas Turbine Engine Mass Model for the Defining of the Turboshaft Engine Optimal Operating Cycle Parameters
Abstract The article describes the adjusted parametrical turboshaft gas turbine engine mass model that is applied for the helicopter engine operating cycle parameters optimization during a conceptual engineering. During the operation of the take-off mass, which indirectly characterizes the cost of materials for the entire designed aircraft system, one of the main components which determines the coordination of the helicopter and its engine parameters is a mass of the gas turbine power unit. Moreover, during the parametrical studies the designed mass of a power unit should be defined by the parameters of a gas turbine engine; however, this type of dependencies is not that well enough studied for today. Therefore the evaluation of the dependency between the engine mass and its operational parameters is performed by using either generalized statistical data for existing designs or by parametrical mass models since there is nothing more precise up to date. However as new types of gas turbine engines appear it is required to update the values of parametrical model coefficients. This article describes the influence of different cooling system units on the engine mass and also clarifies the coefficients that specify the engine mass advance by introducing the structural-technological measures. The last one is highly dependent on the designed gas turbine engine (GTE) serial production year. It also has been proposed to represent some coefficients that are used in the model as dependencies of the main operational parameters. This has allowed to perform the parametrical study and to gain predictive solutions in correspondence to the modern engine design level.