NAP ACOUSTICS SOUTH EAST ASIA PTE LTD
DESIGNERS & MANUFACTURERS OF NOISE AND VIBRATION CONTROL PRODUCTS


Hawker de Havilland - Jet Engine Test Cell

 

Engines for the seventy-five F/A-18 Hornet fighters supplied to the Royal Australian Air Force by McDonnell Douglas were assembled and tested at Hawker de Havilland's factory in Port Melbourne.
Assembly of the General Electric F404 engines is followed by run up testing in the new air-cooled, afterburner Jet Engine Test Cell. Overhauled engines are also sent to the Test Cell for run up before installation into the aircraft.

As exhaust temperatures run in excess of 3000°C, the structural, dynamic and thermal loads are enormous. NAP Acoustics won an acoustic contract from Fletcher Watts for the Jet Engine Test Cell exhaust shaft silencing. This was the most complex in the entire cell. Approximately 290 high grade stainless steel exhaust modules were assembled together to form an exhaust silencer 9.5 metres square and approximately 12 metres in length.

 It was designed to handle the enormous mass flow of hot, exceptionally turbulent exhaust gases and to reduce the noise levels at the boundary to the specified criterion. As the exhaust silencer weighed in excess of 100 tonnes, it required 10 acoustic beams which broke the silencer down to smaller sections, thus facilitating easier installation and fabrication.

NAP Acoustics was involved in the project for a total of eight months and excelled in meeting all manufacturing, engineering and quality control requirements. Installation was carried out quickly and with minimal problems.

The NAP group has also been involved in other test cell work for Ansett and Australian Airlines, Normalair Garrett, Melbourne, and Garrett, Singapore, as well as acoustical equipment at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories, Melbourne.