Story ID: 
Williams fires up FJ44-3 version
By: AIN Staff
Caption: Williams International today will formally unveil its latest and most powerful turbofan, the 3,000-lb-thrust FJ44-3, a pair of which will power Cessna’s ne
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Williams International today will formally unveil its latest and most powerful turbofan, the 3,000-lb-thrust FJ44-3, a pair of which will power Cessna’s new CJ3. Williams has flown a development version of the new turbofan, on a CJ2 testbed.At Booth No. 686 on the NBAA ’02 exhibit floor, the Walled Lake, Mich. manufacturer is displaying an array of engines starting at 770 lb of thrust and increasing in increments of 400 to 500 lb up to the FJ44-3. This latest FJ44–unlike the -1 and -2 versions, in which Rolls-Royce is a 15 percent participant–is strictly a Williams International product. The FJ44-3 features a better than 5-to-1 thrust-to-weight ratio and a new, lightweight dual-channel Fadec.In addition to the 2,300-lb FJ44-2, used in the Cessna CJ2, Raytheon Premier I and Sino-Swearingen SJ30-2, and 1,900-lb FJ44-1 in the CJ1, Williams is displaying the other two engines currently moving toward certification–the 1,200-lb FJ33 and the diminutive FJ22 (dubbed EJ22 by Eclipse Aviation). Weighing in at a mere 85 lb, this engine puts out 770 lb of thrust, for the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any civil engine. A tandem of FJ22s powers the Eclipse 500 entry-level jet. An indication that Williams International does not plan to level off is the continuing expansion of its Ogden, Utah production facility, which chairman and CEO Sam Williams believes “is the world’s most highly automated and vertically integrated ‘lean’ engine manufacturing facility.”