SCITEK Engine Facility

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Our Engines

By offering a number of engines of differing sizes, an engine can be selected where the running costs are appropriate to suit the customer requirements.

APU Gas Turbine Engine

SCITEK’s Rover APU engine can be used for emissions studies or for developing instrumentation for use with gas turbine engines

Wren Micro Turbine Engine

This is the smallest form of gas turbine engine that can be used to simulate a gas turbine environment. This offers a suitable alternative with cheaper running costs than the Rover APU engine.

Turbo Jet Engine

SCITEK owns 2 Honeywell ALF502R geared fan engines. These are currently being used in the development of a telemetry system as well as in emissions studies. These are the largest engine type in our facility and can be offered for use in R&D related projects or to increase the TRL of new technologies.

An engine facility with a difference.

The use of new and innovative instrumentation has not greatly increased in gas turbine engines partly because the operating environment is harsh and also due to difficulty in convincing engine manufacturers to try out new sensors on their engines.

Engine manufacturers want to buy new technologies in a fully developed state. However, this requires many cycles of testing on GTs leading to a catch 22 situation and in effect stifles innovation. SCITEK’s facility offers a welcome solution.

Who the facility is suited for

Sensor manufacturers
Engine OEMs
Universities that are looking to utilise the engines to validate research studies
Students and Graduates – a fantastic teaching tool to provide students with hands on experience with gas turbines.

Location

Use of small engines carried out at SCITEK’s in house facilities in Derby. The larger engines are housed off site at Cardiff University.

Type of running to be considered

Simulation of flight cycle: for cyclic tests of sensors and for emission tests
Endurance testing
Engine health monitoring: faults can be inserted onto components
Tests under different environments: spray of water based solutions into intake
Model validation: for validating mathematical models under realistic operating conditions
New engine control algorithms
Monitoring engine performance under adverse intake environments

Type of modifications to engines

Temperature probes
Emission probes
Optical probes
Pressure probes
Tip-timing
Tip-clearnace
Accelerometer
Strain gauges
New combustion chamber
On pylon signal conditioning

More Information about our Engine Test Facility

SCITEK are happy to discuss individual requirements with interested parties. We would also be interested to hear any alternative proposed uses for this facility.