Gas turbine governor fuel control collection in my man cave

[bradfordelectric]

If you like gas turbine prime mover control history, check out my new history web-site at oldwoodward.com.  I Have been collecting fuel controls and their operating manuals for over 20 years now  and this is my first forum.

[ingeniero]

very cool. If I send some GE speedtronic literature would you be interested?

[finiteparts]

Very neat collection!

I have a few fuel controls in my collection that I got to disassemble and use for inspiration. I made a manual control valve system for one of J44 engines as my junior year design project while getting my undergrad degree. It was simple pressure regulated, spill control valve. I had to gun drill a few passages and grind the valve body to tenths, which was a great training exercise on producing design intent when high tolerances were critical. I never put it on the engine because I found a good pump and fcu for the J44 on eBay, but I did flow test it and found that it had some leaks and a very non-linear response over a large portion of the valve stroke(some was expected due to the circular port window, but it seemed worse than the MATLAB prediction that I had "designed" up).

I also have a prized edition of Sobey and Suggs, "Control of Aircraft and Missle Powerplants" that I used to familiarize myself with basic turbojet control theory back in the college days. Well actually, the one that I used was the Universities copy, but I found a nice copy for sale that had been salvaged out of Redstone Scientific Information Center at Redstone Arsenal. Now I have quite a few of the newer texts, but none of them talk in terms of bellows and ball-head governors.

Thanks for sharing!

Chris