Engine condition trend monitoring specialist Jet-Care recently made its gas path analysis (GPA) service available for Rolls-Royce engines powering business aircraft. The group now offers GPA support for the following turbofans: BR700-710C4, BR700-725A12, BR700-725A1, Tay 611-8, AE3007A and AE3007C.

The process detects deterioration and faults in the engine core by analyzing key flight data parameters, including fuel flow, shaft speeds and gas temperatures. “These new additions to our already extensive range of Jet-Care GPA engine trend programs allow operators of single- or mixed-engine types to tend their entire fleet with one quality provider,” said Jet-Care CEO David Glass. “We feel very strongly about providing full support to an operator and always look at any potential engine issues from an operational perspective. We do not expect an operator to work on a ‘no news is good news’ basis or to work it out for themselves, as is the case with so many of the other commercially available trend programs.”

Here at the NBAA show, Jet-Care (Booth N1121) is presenting the results from a GPA Clinic in which the performance of operators’ engines has been evaluated for free. Operators can also ask questions about engine trends and issues.

The company has European laboratories in the UK and Switzerland, operating under the name Spectro. The headquarters for Jet-Care USA is located in Morristown, N.J.

Last year, Jet-Care made GPA available to operators of Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6-series turboprop engines, adding to the services it has long provided for the manufacturer’s PW100 turboprop, as well as for its 300/500 series and JT15D turbofans. Also included in its GPA portfolio are Honeywell’s TFE731, ALF502, LF507 and HTF7000 engines, as well as the Williams FJ44, Rolls-Royce BR710 and GE CFE738.

The main benefit of GPA is the chance to identify issues early enough to reduce maintenance costs. The core engine parameters measured for the GPA process include speeds (N₁, N₂, etc.), fuel flow and operating temperatures. This information can be collected through electronic data capture, when available, but Jet-Care also prefers to capture data manually collected by the pilot. Increasingly, flight crews are using iPads to record and upload the data, and Jet-Care’s iECHO GPA application is a useful tool for this task. By having both sets of data (electronically and manually captured) the Jet-Care team can look for anomalies that affect one data set and not the other. This is a powerful analytical tool.

In addition to identifying engine health trends that are important to maintenance planning, GPA also reveals engine-usage trends. This can be particularly helpful to fleet operators eager to identify, for instance, why some of their aircraft are being operated more efficiently than others.

In some instances, Jet-Care has helped engine manufacturers with product development work. For instance, one OEM changed a gas path component that affected performance and wanted Jet-Care analysis to demonstrate to the airframer that the change had maintained or even improved overall performance

Separately, Jet-Care also offers an array of laboratory services; analyzing oil, chips, filter debris, fuel and hydraulic fluids. These help to provide a fuller picture of an engine’s condition.

Jet-Care’s analysis of oil, debris, filters, fuel and hydraulic fluids addresses three main issues: the mechanical condition of the equipment; the condition of fluids; and any contamination that might undermine

performance. The tests can reveal failures in the oil-wetted system such as bearings, gears, towershaft, mis-assembly or other oil-wetted components.

With fluids, the laboratory teams look for factors that could indicate oxidation and acidity in the oil or contamination issues such as incorrect oil mixes, the presence of hydraulic fluid and/or fuel in the oil and unacceptable levels of particulates present in the hydraulic system. Jet-Care also analyzes fuel for moisture in tanks and potentially harmful microbes.