Story ID: 624Parker
Parker Aerospace Gets Smarter Pumps
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: A variety of new design features from Parker Aerospace could help aircraft OEMs improve their designs.
Word Count: 566
Parker Aerospace is here at FIA 2014 (Hall 4 Stand A18) highlighting a variety of technology developments and improvements in its customer support provisions. 
  
For the business jet market, Parker Aerospace is designing an oil-replenishment system that will let flight crews add oil to engines when maintenance technicians aren’t available to service the engines. The system combines all the components required into one piece of 28V-powered equipment that can be operated from a control panel installed at ground level on the rear fuselage. Pilots can “replenish engine oil in seconds by simply turning a switch and pressing a button,” according to Parker Aerospace.
  
Also on the lubrication front is the company’s integrated engine lubrication system for small turbine engines. The system combines components, such as oil pumps, reservoirs, filters and sensors, into a single integrated component package. This makes design of the engine simpler less complex and can cut system weight by up to 25 percent. Naturally, the integrated system has to be designed for each engine type, but would share the basic configuration. 
  
Parker Aerospace designers are also tackling an annoying yet seemingly small problem, the squirts of fuel that drain from the engine manifold after shutdown, usually onto the ramp. Parker’s new “ecology tank” captures that fuel and, using a jet pump and float valve arrangement, returns it to the fuel system during engine start. 
  
“The amount of fuel captured after each shutdown is not large,” said Jim McShane, Parker Aerospace Gas Turbine Fuel Systems Division director of business development, “but when you add this up over the years an aircraft is in service, the contribution of the Parker ecology tank to a better environment is significant. It’s a small system helping to make a big difference.”
  
For the defense market, Parker Aerospace is developing a family of polyalphaolefin (PAO) cooling pumps to meet a variety of thermal-management applications. The pumps are designed with 90 percent common parts, and the remainder will be optimized for the specific application. The modular pump design makes it easier to design cooling systems for low-build-volume sensor or electronic suites, and the pump itself has “a wet-motor design that utilizes the PAO coolant to extract heat not only from the sensor or electronic suite, but the pump motor as well.”
  
An operating unit of Parker Hannifin, Parker Aerospace specializes in all aspects of design, manufacture and service of flight controls, hydraulic and fuel systems, fluid conveyance, thermal management and engine systems and components.

  
Customer Support
  
A single point of contact for technical, business and service calls and questions is the goal at Parker Aerospace’s global customer response center, open 24/7/365 and based in Irvine, California. Services available include material, logistic and technical support for AOG, parts quotes, order execution and delivery, repair order management and parts pooling network management. The response center has already begun phasing in services, and the company expects full services to be available by June 2015.
  
In the Middle East, Parker Aerospace’s customer support operations opened a global pooling center that will help support customers around the world. The new center is the first in a series, according to Parker Aerospace, intended to speed up service to airlines. Third-party logistics provider SDV was chosen to help launch the center, which is in Dubai.