Clean Sky Open Rotor wins Aviation Week award

Safran Aircraft Engines has won Aviation Week Network’s 62nd Annual Laureate Awards in the Propulsion category. Under Europe’s Clean Sky research program, Safran and partners developed and ground-tested a full-scale counter-rotating open-rotor engine, showing substantial savings in fuel burn over the latest commercial turbofans and achieving significant reductions on noise over past open-rotor engines.

GKN Aerospace Engine Systems is a partner in the Open Rotor project. GKN is responsible for the front- and aft rotating frame modules. The Open Rotor engine was ground tested at Safran and test data is now being analysed.

– We look forward to receiving the rotating frames back for inspection early next year, says David Elmdahl, Programme Manager at GKN for the Open Rotor. The engine testing was very successful from a validation point of view. We now have proof that our design works as expected. Many of the new SMEs (small and medium enterprises) subcontracted during the project are now on their way to becoming suppliers in our series production and in addition the machining method developed for the rotating frames is already implemented in our current production of turbine exhaust cases, David continues.