Avro Canada Chinook
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The Avro Canada TR.4 Chinook was Canada's first
turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, an ...
engine, designed by Turbo Research and manufactured by A.V. Roe Canada Ltd. Named for the warm
Chinook wind Chinook winds, or simply Chinooks, are two types of prevailing warm, generally westerly winds in western North America: Coastal Chinooks and interior Chinooks. The coastal Chinooks are persistent seasonal, wet, southwesterly winds blowing in from ...
that blows in the
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, only three Chinooks were built and none were used operationally. The Chinook was nevertheless an extremely successful design in terms of introducing new concepts and materials, and after being scaled up from to , would become the
Orenda Orenda is the Iroquois name for a certain spiritual energy inherent in people and their environment. It is an "extraordinary invisible power believed by the Iroquois Native Americans to pervade in varying degrees in all animate and inanimate na ...
.


Development

In late 1942 the
National Research Council of Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC; french: Conseil national de recherches Canada) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research & development. It is the largest federal research ...
(NRC) sent Dr. J.J. Greene and Malcolm Kuhring to England to report on the various advanced research projects and to see if Canada could play a role in them. One of the team's many topics in the resulting report was an introduction to the work on jet engines being carried out by
Frank Whittle Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, (1 June 1907 – 8 August 1996) was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 fo ...
at
Power Jets Power Jets was a British company set up by Frank Whittle for the purpose of designing and manufacturing jet engines. The company was nationalised in 1944, and evolved into the National Gas Turbine Establishment. History Founded on 27 Januar ...
. The
Department of Munitions and Supply The Department of Munitions and Supply was the Canadian federal government ministry responsible for co-ordinating domestic industry during World War II. It was created by the ''Department of Munitions and Supply Act'' with C.D. Howe as its Ministe ...
(DMS) thought this was a wonderful opportunity to get in at the "ground floor" of a newly developing field, one that the country could enter with relative ease and thereby reduce their dependence on foreign suppliers for aircraft engines. In early 1943 a new mission, including Dr. Ken Tupper and Paul Dilworth from the NRC and C.A. Banks of the DMS, left for England specifically to study the jet engine and report on ways that Canada could contribute to the jet effort. The resulting report, known today as the Banks Report, suggested two lines of research. One led from the realization that no one in the nascent industry really understood the effects of real-world weather on the operations of jet engines, especially in icing conditions. The report suggested forming a research centre specifically to study this problem. The report went on to suggest the formation of a private jet engine company. Almost immediately after they returned to Canada, Dilworth started work on what became the Cold Weather Testing Station in
Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...
. They were supplied with an original Whittle W.1, and later, a captured Junkers Jumo 004. Their research demonstrated that water ingestion reduced power by about 20%, not entirely unexpected, but at the same time doubled fuel use, which was a surprise. Further work on the problem led to a number of design elements that would be used on future Canadian jet designs. While the CWTS was being set up, the government also worked on the second part of the Banks Report, and on 1 July 1944 formally incorporated Turbo Research in Leaside, Toronto. Dilworth returned from CWTS to lead a series of design studies based on the Whittle-style
centrifugal compressor Centrifugal compressors, sometimes called impeller compressors or radial compressors, are a sub-class of dynamic axisymmetric work-absorbing turbomachinery. They achieve pressure rise by adding energy to the continuous flow of fluid through t ...
design, known as TR.1, TR.2 and TR.3. However, these designs were abandoned in favor of a new axial compressor-based design, the TR.4, likely due to their exposure to the Jumo 004. Over the next year the team was built out as more engineers joined the effort, including
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, Joe Purvis, Burt Avery and Harry Keast from Power Jets. Detailed design was completed in early 1947, and the engine first ran on 17 March 1948. At the time the Chinook was being designed, Avro had little production capacity and no engine fabrication experience. They farmed out parts manufacture to 1,200 different companies, providing everything from gears and ball bearings, to the compressor and turbine blades. Many of the techniques for fabrication had never been needed in Canada before, and led to a small industrial revolution as they were developed for the project. Among the many advances brought to Canadian industry as part of the Chinook program, Light Alloys Ltd. invested in their first aluminum casting, while Shawinigan Chemicals did the same for stainless steels. Although the team had already turned to the design of the Chinook's successor, the Orenda, work on the engines continued in order to gain experience in construction and operation. Frank Whittle personally viewed the engine in 1948. Only six sets of engine parts were made, from these three complete engines and one compressor section were completed. By October 1949 the engines had run over 1,000 hours and had improved to over 3,000 lbf (1,360 kg) thrust.


Design

Designing on the basis of a theoretical twin-engine fighter aircraft, seemingly similar to the
Messerschmitt Me 262 The Messerschmitt Me 262, nicknamed ''Schwalbe'' (German: "Swallow") in fighter versions, or ''Sturmvogel'' (German: "Storm Bird") in fighter-bomber versions, is a fighter aircraft and fighter-bomber that was designed and produced by the Germ ...
, the TR.4 design was in many ways an analog of the Jumo 004. The primary difference in design was the use of six separate
flame can A flame (from Latin '' flamma'') is the visible, gaseous part of a fire. It is caused by a highly exothermic chemical reaction taking place in a thin zone. When flames are hot enough to have ionized gaseous components of sufficient density they ...
s instead of the singular annular combustor of the Jumo. Compared to the Jumo, the Chinook was smaller and lighter; it was about the same diameter, but 20 inches shorter and over lighter. In spite of this it produced almost double the thrust, largely due to the improved materials, especially in the turbine, which allowed for higher operating temperatures and raised the
overall pressure ratio In aeronautical engineering, overall pressure ratio, or overall compression ratio, is the ratio of the stagnation pressure as measured at the front and rear of the compressor of a gas turbine engine. The terms ''compression ratio'' and ''pressure ...
from the Jumo's 3.1 to the Chinook's 4.5. The Chinook's compressor consisted of nine axial stages. The first two were made of stainless steel to help with debris but the remaining seven stages were made of aluminum alloy. These were attached to hubs that were also primarily made of aluminum, except the ninth disk, which was steel as it would be exposed to the heat of the combustion stage. Behind the compressor were the six straight-through flame cans, exiting onto a single-stage steel turbine. The final
exhaust gas temperature Exhaust gas or flue gas is emitted as a result of the combustion of fuels such as natural gas, gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, fuel oil, biodiesel blends, or coal. According to the type of engine, it is discharged into the atmosphere through an ...
was 650 degrees Celsius. Air cooling for the turbine was provided by a series of six tubes running from the middle of the compressor to the turbine, lying between the flame cans, which exited in front of the turbine face. An accessories section was powered off a shaft at the front of the engine at the main bearing. The front main bearing was located under a prominent nose cone that extended well out in front of the engine. An oil tank was "wrapped" around the engine at about the 4 o'clock position, as viewed from the front.


Specifications (TR.4-11)


References


Further reading


"The Chinook"
a 1948 ''Flight'' article *''Turbojet: History and Development 1930-1960. Vol, 2'', Antony Kay, 2007, The Crowwood Press, , pp. 215–216


External links



Avroland

from
Trent University Trent University is a public liberal arts university in Peterborough, Ontario, with a satellite campus in Oshawa, which serves the Regional Municipality of Durham. Trent is known for its Oxbridge college system and small class sizes.
claims that the TR.3 was also an axial-flow design, and Boyd decided to spin off the TR.4 as a smaller version of it. {{Orenda aeroengines 1940s turbojet engines