Story ID: 10101612alerts
HondaJet’s HF120 Engine Approaching Home Stretch
By: Matt Thurber
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Word Count: 205
GE Honda Aero Engines completed water-ingestion testing last week on the HF120 engine that powers Honda Aircraft’s HondaJet. The tests were done in one of GE’s Peebles, Ohio test cells.

“2012 has been an extremely productive year,” said GE Honda Aero president Terry Sharp. The HF120 passed the ice slab test in August 2011 after failing it in February 2011, due to fan blade tip deformation causing a reduction in required thrust, according to executive v-p Masahiko Izumi. “We decided to make a small design change” to the fan blade tips, he said.

Many tests have been completed, and HF120s have cumulatively logged more than 5,400 hours and cycles. A key test–the block test–requires 150 hours of cyclic testing under extreme conditions, including triple-redline stress: maximum fan and core speed and maximum ITT at the same time. Once this test is done in about a month, that engine will be disassembled completely and laid out for FAA inspection.

GE Honda has submitted 93 percent of the certification reports to the FAA, with 83 percent already approved. After the block test, the company expects to submit all documents to the FAA in January or February, with certification expected in mid-May.