Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP)

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"Fuel-Efficient Engine to Increase Range, Power of Army Helicopters"
January 2014
by Valerie Insinna

Source:
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2014/January/Pages/Fuel-EfficientEnginetoIncreaseRange,PowerofArmyHelicopters.aspx

During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Black Hawk helicopters were regularly flown at higher altitudes and in hotter temperatures than their engines were designed to withstand. With underpowered engines in those conditions, each helicopter could only carry five soldiers at a time — about half of an 11-person squad.

The Army over the next decade plans to phase out legacy equipment and introduce a new, more powerful engine that will be able to take a full squad twice as far, all while burning less fuel. Through the Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP, the service will replace the T700 engines that power its Black Hawk and Apache helicopters.

When the Army fielded General Electric’s T700 engine in the 1970s, it required that an engine be able to transport a squad at 4,000 feet in 95-degree Fahrenheit temperatures.

“What they’ve learned through Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in other theaters, is that’s not sufficient to cover the globe,” said Jerry Wheeler, vice president of the Advanced Turbine Engine Co. (ATEC), a joint venture between Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney.

ATEC is one of the participants in an Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate initiative called the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine program, a science and technology effort that is a precursor to the improved turbine engine program of record.

No engine will be fielded at the conclusion of the AATE program, but it has given ATEC and General Electric a head start in developing the technologies the Army will need for its future engine. The ITEP competition is slated to begin this year, as the science and technology program comes to a close.

The goal of the AATE program is to develop a 3,000-shaft horsepower engine around the same size as the T700, which weighs about 450 pounds. The engines will be 50 percent more powerful and 25 percent more fuel-efficient. The new engines also will have a longer lifespan and lower maintenance costs.

The requirements for the improved turbine engine have not been finalized, but the AATE program is designed to help reduce the risk of developmental technologies that will likely be pulled into the ITEP program, said Gary Butler, engine systems team leader at the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate.

“We’re providing a technology foundation to achieve the better fuel efficiency metrics and better horsepower to weight to get … more power in that same envelope,” he said.

With the ITEP engine, commanders will not have to choose between fielding a high-powered engine and saving money on fuel, said Lt. Col. Roger Kuykendall, Army program manager of common engines.

“ITEP is the best of both worlds,” he said.

The engine will expand the helicopter’s flight ceiling to meet the Army’s new requirement — an altitude of 6,000 feet in 95-degree weather, he said.

Black Hawk and Apache helicopters can fly in those conditions now, he said. But with the new engine, a Black Hawk’s range and the number of troops it can carry will double.

The Black Hawk is the Army’s most versatile aircraft and is able to accomplish missions ranging from transporting troops to conducting air assaults. Today, when an 11-person squad is assigned to carry out a mission 150 miles away, two Black Hawks are needed to transport the troops, and the aircraft would have to stop halfway through the flight to refuel and pick up ammunition, Kuykendall said.

Doing that requires more personnel and more convoys on the road that are subject to improvised explosive devices, thus increasing risk to troops and equipment, he said.

In order to carry a full squad, commanders could use a CH-47 Chinook heavy lift helicopter, which burns more fuel, Wheeler said. Neither option is ideal.

The Apache would be able to loiter significantly longer if equipped with an ITEP engine, Kuykendall said. “If you did it with a current engine, maybe you can’t take all your ammo with you or all your rockets. You have got to cut down ammunition and add more fuel. So now they can stay on [station] longer with the full complement of their weapons.”

As part of an analysis of alternatives, the Army has studied how long loiter time would be increased with an ITEP engine. Because the analysis isn’t due until the end of January, Kuykendall could not offer specific data.

The engines would cut fuel consumption and therefore cost, an enticing prospect during a period of fiscal austerity. Using data from the past five years, the service estimates the engines will save 14 million gallons of fuel a year if flying hours remain the same, he said.

The Army plans to release a request for proposals for the ITEP engine by the end of spring. Competitors would progress through a technology development phase ending in fiscal year 2019, followed by an engineering-and-manufacturing development phase. Low-rate initial production would start after a Milestone C decision scheduled for 2023.

Although the service wants to retain two contractors through EMD, which would include testing the engine and integrating it with aircraft, “unfortunately I don’t think the funding is there to do that,” Kuykendall said. Because of budget pressures on the program, the service may be forced to downselect to a single vendor earlier in the competition, he said.

Supporting multiple vendors through a competition is expensive, said a government worker who is affiliated with the program but is not allowed to speak to reporters. However, having contractors compete with each other though a longer span of development may help to drive down cost and risk for the Army, resulting in a better product.

“It has a lot of general officer [support]. We understand the importance of it and the cost savings we can get from it. It’s just unfortunate that with the fiscal constraints that the Army is under right now, some hard choices have to be made,” he said.

The service will ultimately purchase 6,215 engines, 10 percent of which are spares, to replace those in the Black Hawk and Apache, Kuykendall said.

It may buy even more ITEP engines for the Army’s next-generation family of rotorcraft, called future vertical lift. The Army plans on fielding light, medium, heavy and ultra-heavy versions of the aircraft, officials have said. Initial operational capability is planned for 2034.

The Army will likely install the engine in at least some of the variants, but because requirements for future vertical lift are still in the works, Army officials have yet to decide which versions will incorporate the engine.

The hope is that engines will at least be installed in the light and medium aircraft, Wheeler said.

Kuykendall is working with other Army officials to mesh production timelines so that the future vertical lift program can incorporate the ITEP engine into its development. The service wants to avoid a repeat of the failed Comanche program, which sought to build an advanced attack helicopter and its engine at the same time. Every time a requirement changed for one program, the other would have to make adjustments, Kuykendall said.

“What I would like to do is to get an ITEP production model done during the future vertical lift tech development phase,” he said. If the Army’s program executive office for aviation decides to use the new engines in those aircraft, “it reduces [its] risk. They’ll have an engine to plan around.”

PEO aviation has upgraded the T700 every decade since its introduction and is currently replacing its 701-Cs with D-models. But for the most part, the 40-year-old engine’s design has peaked, Kuykendall said.

“If you wanted to squeeze something else out of this engine, you’re only going to get maybe an extra 100 shaft horsepower, maybe one or two improvements to fuel efficiency,” he said.

After five years of design and development, the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine program is winding down. Both ATEC and General Electric have built and demonstrated two engines, Butler said.

Incumbent General Electric is offering the GE3000, a 3,000 horsepower engine that weighs roughly the same as the T700. General Electric officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The GE3000 sports new materials and cooling configurations and a more aerodynamic design than its predecessor, the company website said.

ATEC has developed the HPW 3000, which officials said would secure a 25 percent improvement in fuel efficiency, saving 50 million gallons a year.

It would lower production and maintenance costs by at least 20 percent and save $4.5 million in maintenance costs, according to company materials. When combining savings from fuel efficiency, maintenance and logistics, ATEC estimates its engine will cut total costs by $1 billion compared to the legacy T700.

Besides those savings, the HPW 3000 gives Apaches at least an extra 48 minutes of loiter time and a 3,330 increase in lift capacity, allowing the aircraft to carry a full load of fuel and weapons, the company said. It would also double the Black Hawk’s range and payload.

Wheeler would not say whether Apache or Black Hawk airframes would need to be modified in order to accommodate the engine. “Our goal since day one in configuring the engine was to pursue a drop-in capability,” he said.

The first engine completed durability tests in July, and the company was pleased with the results, Wheeler said. “It validated that the program’s goals are within reach.”

The second engine began performance tests in September, and will move on to sand ingestion tests after that, he said.

During performance tests, technicians collect data on each of the engine’s components, such as how they respond to high pressure and hot temperatures, Butler said. They also measure horsepower and fuel efficiency to ensure the engine is meeting program goals.

For sand ingestion tests, “we actually have a rig set up to throw sand into the engine and measure the capability of that engine to tolerate that sand ingestion,” he said. “That’s usually not a typical test we do in S&T, but we thought that would be a good demonstration vehicle” to drive down risk before the ITEP program of record begins.
 
Brochure:
 

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"Hyper-Efficient Engines For Army Attack Helicopters"
by William Pentland

12/15/201

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/12/15/hyper-efficient-engines-for-army-attack-helicopters/

When I was growing up in Missouri during the 1980′s, Vietnam war movies were all the rage.

Soldiers scrambling to climb aboard U.S. military helicopters before approaching enemy forces overwhelmed them was a staple scene in those movies. If the helicopters loitered too long, they would run out of fuel before making it back to their base.

Logistical constraints like these are convenient plot devices for war movies.

In the future, screenwriters may have fewer constraints to choose from than they have had in the past – at least when it comes to U.S. military helicopters.

Over the next decade, the U.S. Army plans to deploy new, more powerful engines in its UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters, allowing them to carry a full squadron of troops twice as far as they do today while burning less fuel.

The U.S. Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP, was established to develop next-generation engines for the Boeing AH-64 Apache and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, which are currently powered by General Electric's T-700s engine.

The T-700 engine, which was originally fielded in the 1970s, can transport a squadron at an altitude of 4,000 feet in temperatures up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Black Hawk helicopters frequently flew at altitudes above 4,000 feet to avoid energy fire. These altitudes reduced engine power and lowered the number of troops each helicopter could to about half of its typical 11-person squad.

The new engines will raise the helicopter’s flight ceiling to an altitude of 6,000 feet in 95 degree weather. In addition, the new engines will expand a Black Hawk’s range and double the number of troops it can carry.

The ITEP’s next-generation engines will produce 65% more shaft horsepower (SHP) than the T-700′s 2,000 SHP at the same weight of 450 pounds. SHP is the power delivered by a gas turbine to the rotors of a helicopter.

The ITEP’s 3,000 SHP engine will also decrease fuel consumption by 25%, expand engine life by 20% and reduce maintenance costs by 35%.

Two companies are currently competing for the ITEP engine contract: General Electric and the Advanced Turbine Engine Company (ATEC), a joint venture between Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney founded in 2006.

General Electric has completed the initial tests for its ITEP engine, the GE-3000, which includes advanced new materials that increase strength without increasing weight.

ATEC has also completed initial tests for its ITEP engine, the HPW-3000, which claims a 25% improvement in fuel efficiency, saving 50 million gallons a year.

The Army, which plans to release a request for proposals for the ITEP engine in early 2014, will ultimately purchase 6,215 ITEP engines.
 
"ATEC Successfully Tests Second ITEP Engine"
Oct. 14, 2014 - 10:30AM |
By AARON MEHTA

Source:
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20141014/SHOWSCOUT04/310130035

WASHINGTON — The Advanced Turbine Engine Company (ATEC) has successfully completed a second test of its HPW3000 engine, its offering for the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) program.

The late-summer evaluation tested both the engine’s performance and its ability to operate when fine and coarse sand were run through it. The test went off without a problem, and it is performing in line with ITEP requirements, company officials said.

“We’re ecstatic about the results,” said Jerry Wheeler, vice president of programs at ATEC.

Full Coverage From our AUSA Digital Show Daily

The ITEP program seeks to develop a replacement for the General Electric T-700 engines that power the Boeing AH-64 Apache and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk fleets. The goal is to develop an engine with 50 percent more power and 25 percent more fuel efficiency than the legacy T-700s.

Hitting those levels would allow for leaner operations in the field, particularly in the “high and hot” environments that pop up in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

ATEC, a 50-50 joint venture between Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney, is expected to compete against General Electrics for the final award.

While the HPW3000 is designed for the ITEP competition, both Wheeler and company president Craig Madden expressed confidence other markets exist for the engine, should it be selected by the Army.

Beyond the various operators of Black Hawks and Apaches, Wheeler said, the engine could make sense as the power plant for the Army’s future vertical lift vehicle, whenever it is selected.

“The ITEP engine is well-positioned to be the engine, or the basis for the engine, for the light and medium [future vertical lift] variants, depending on the requirements,” he said.

Keeping any program on track in the current budget environment is tough, but Madden said the Army continues to prioritize the engine.

“Throughout the Army it is recognized as being needed, and the budget is there,” Madden said. “You have to be concerned about any program in this environment, but the program has such support at senior army leadership level that we’re pretty confident.”

Wheeler said the goal is obviously to win the ITEP competition, but the development effort also benefits Honeywell and Pratt, ATEC’s parent companies.

“At its heart, [the] program is a technology validation program that companies use to advance their technologies to a higher rate of technology readiness, and then that benefits other programs as well,” Wheeler said.
 
http://breakingdefense.com/2015/09/buy-a-new-helo-engine-the-army-thinks-it-can-thinks-it-can/
 
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/09/why-america-really-needs-itep-engines/

ITEP is a leap ahead in engine technology to provide a new lease on life for the Apache and Black Hawk. Compared to the T700, it will provide 50% more power, a 65% improvement in power-to-weight, a 20% longer engine life, a 25% improvement in specific fuel consumption, and 20-25% lower production and maintenance costs.

That's some serious performance improvements :eek:
 
The ITEP competition pits GE, which produced the T700, against ATEC - a partnership of Pratt & Whitney and Honeywell. GE is pursuing a conventional single-spool gas generator design while ATEC is developing a two-spool gas generator.

From GE:

http://helihub.com/2016/08/25/ge-awarded-102m-preliminary-design-engine-contract-for-apache-and-black-hawk/

From ATEC:

http://news.thomasnet.com/companystory/u-s-army-selects-atec-to-design-dramatically-improved-helicopter-engine-for-black-hawk-and-apache-fleets-20059914

http://www.dualspoolrules.com
 
ITEP program update for T901

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLDBbeND78o
 
General Electric wins $517 million contract to build engines for Army’s next generation helicopters
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/02/02/general-electric-wins-517-million-contract-to-build-engines-for-armys-next-generation-helicopters/
 

ITEP engine passes testing milestone​

July 7, 2022
The Army has concluded First Engine to Test of the engine it says will power Black Hawk, Apache and Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft helicopters, the program executive office for aviation announced Thursday.

The Army powered on the first GE-built T901 engine in late March and ran it for more than 100 hours of flight time ending on June 28, the Army said. The engine is being developed through the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program.

“The event successfully verified and validated performance models on the Army’s next-generation rotorcraft engine,” the Army announced.

The engine will now undergo a multiyear testing process to reach full Army qualification.

Preliminary Flight Rating testing will begin this fall with eight T901 engines, according to the Army announcement. The T901 will go through almost 5,000 hours of testing to achieve full engine qualification, the Army said.

The engine is designed to fit in the existing structures of Black Hawk and Apache helicopters and provide greater power, reliability and fuel efficiency over existing engines.

Testing of the engine had been pushed back due to supply chain snarls and coronavirus-related delays, the Government Accountability Office said last month. Those delays pushed back the development timeline for the FARA program.
 
LYNN, Mass. — On 28 September the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) achieved a significant milestone. The Government has accepted the first General Electric (GE) Aerospace T901 flight test (FT) engine, with the second T901 engine currently going through the acceptance process. Both engines are on-track to be delivered by the Government to the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) competitive prototype vendors by the end of October 2023.
 

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