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FAA certification in auto conversion aircraft

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Boomer

Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2013
Messages
7
Location
Spain
Hi, I want to share with you an idea about getting FAA certification in auto conversion aircraft. My first language is spanish and I still have to learn a lot of english so excuse any mistake. Thank you.

As we all know the main expense of the aircraft is the engine: purchase , maintenance and consumption. Current aircraft have designs and costs of the last century, not having benefited of the same improvements than automotive engines. I mean car and motorcycle engines that are mass produced. But everybody in this forum knows that, let's go on.

I had the idea because the Tecnam P2006T has managed to be FAA certified using two Rotax 912 engines that are often used in ultralight, not certified aircraft.
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General aviation requires engines safer that automobile ones, the idea is to achieve equivalent levels of security through redundancy of automotive engines and this is where I need expert opinions to see if giving equivalent power and security I can get FAA certification. I'll put a very simplified example to understand the concept:

Suppose a Lycoming engine O-360 with 160 hp from a Cessna 172 fails once every 10,000 hours. It could be replaced by 2 car engines with 80 hp that fail once every... say 100 hours. Whether it would be best to connect both engines to the same propeller or put a propeller on each engine, we would have an equivalent system.

Joint power of the two engines would be the same, 80 hp + 80 hp = 160 hp.
Safety will also be the same since both engines fail at the same time each 100x100 = 10.000 hours.

You can criticize that a double engine would be heavier than the engine it replaced, or that it can't maintain consistently high revs. Both problems can be solved with more power, if we use two engines of 160 hp or even more hp, we could use them at half power, as often used in cars. You could even use motorcycle engines that have better power/weight ratio.

Can also be criticized that safety is not enough, we could add more engines. Perhaps motorcycle engines are better, we could add a third central engine, even two engines on each wing. Four 500cc motorcycle engines can give 46 HP each, 184 combined horsepower. Even more creative solutions, such as several diesel engines with a generator connected to an electric motor on the propeller.

I'm talking about using it in FAA certificated aircraft. That would be a revolution because the cost would be significantly reduced. Several automotive engines are cheater than one aviation engine: purchase, maintenance and consumption. More people could buy and maintain FAA certificated aircraft.

I look forward to your comments.
 
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