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FADEC - how exactly can it improve performance or fuel consumption on our piston engines

Here is the Lyco FADEC engine discussed above (from EDNY 2019)



I think the clear plastic panel in the last pic is supposed to be the firewall, so the ECU goes on the cockpit side of that.

It also looks like this engine needs an awful lot of room behind it. Admittedly this configuration is for a twin, which normally has a lot of wasted space behind each engine, and in a SE the turbo would go underneath…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

That aircraft didn’t have a FADEC engine

In addition it was a certified engine. The 914F.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Peter wrote:

This is not a good example for FADEC.

That aircraft didn’t have a FADEC engine — the throttle was conventional. I did have an electronically controlled turbocharger which was activated when the throttle was moved past the MCT position.

But your point about failure modes is valid, of course. For those who don’t want to read the whole report, the key point was that POH actions for turbo control unit (TCU) failures also disabled warnings about engine overboost. The likely chain of events was that TCU failed with the wastegate closed, the pilot followed the correct procedure according to the POH and then inadvertently severely overboosted the engine leading to a rapid engine failure.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 04 Apr 08:18
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

This is not a good example for FADEC. It destroyed the engine, apparently. This shows that one has to be pretty careful with failure modes, and probably a lot of this stuff going into the homebuilt/experimental market is dodgy in this department.

Proper engine maps in an EEPROM + the appropriate sensors and an ADC will do it more efficiently than any one of us 100% of the time, cycle to cycle.

Indeed, but look at the list of sensors in the Lycoming engine above. It is a lot of failure modes to deal with.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

mh wrote:

A manual mixture allows ops for best power or best economy, depending on what you’re aiming at.
Proper engine maps in an EEPROM + the appropriate sensors and an ADC will do it more efficiently than any one of us 100% of the time, cycle to cycle.
ESMK, Sweden

No free lunch I guess.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

Or laziness. It’s not needed and not wanted in a modern aircraft/engine. It comes from a time when fuel didn’t matter. Fuel was cheap and environmental pollution was not yet invented. A simple adjustable cooling air outlet/inlet would solve this for fast planes (150+ knots or something).

Adding cowl flaps is one airframe design solution that allows a tight, efficient cowling, and running rich and burning 1-2 gallons more fuel ($5-10) for cooling in every climbout is another. Extending cowl flaps increases drag in climb a little and also uses a little extra fuel. Either solution works and both are inconsequential in terms of fuel burn except for saving a great deal more fuel in the subsequent flight as a result of lower cooling drag.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 01 Apr 14:45

Does SETP have fadec too? some of them at least. I means, they have dual alternator and solid battery, I don’t think it is more risky; it is considering the way it works, but at the end, safety standard are here to find solution.
And for fuel calculation, some automatism would be great:
-less work charge for the pilot, especially when you have 2 engines and 6 levers to care of
-engine would always run the best mixture if engine management loop is correctly made with information for EGT, CHT, O2 sensor. computer does it much better than human, especially when they have to manage things in parallele.
I would not be surprised if reliability would come as first benefit, may be more than consumption.
EFI in cars have been sold with a lot of fuel improvement in the late 80s, but I believe the gain was no so great. But no more starter and a car that almost always starts, cold of hot…Turbocharger waste gate management would also be more efficient and problably safer.

The BMW M5 E60 has around 50 parameters to care about in a continuous was to adjust mixture live. Usually there are 10 to 20 cartographies that allows finding a base value for injection, and the various “secondary parameters” such like temperature will add a slight correction. The load and heat accumulation is also taken into account.

Last Edited by greg_mp at 01 Apr 07:37
LFMD, France

Peter wrote:

I wonder who the launch customer was?

Tecnam apparently.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Silvaire wrote:

Actually this results from good airframe engineering to minimize cooing drag at the higher speeds associated with higher powered and/or more aerodynamic aircraft

Or laziness. It’s not needed and not wanted in a modern aircraft/engine. It comes from a time when fuel didn’t matter. Fuel was cheap and environmental pollution was not yet invented. A simple adjustable cooling air outlet/inlet would solve this for fast planes (150+ knots or something). Anyway, that TEO-540 is i bit cool in this respect. It has multipoint fuel injection, and one of the features is:

Automatically adjusts fuel mixture based on operation setpoints and engine conditions to:
Independently control each engine cylinder to prevent high CHTs
Enhanced fuel efficiency – Enables the engine to run at best power or best economy
depending on the engine operation setpoint
The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
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