page_title: Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 / Design
caption_attribution_description: Reduction gears on Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada PT6 gas turbine engine.
context_page_description: The Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 is a turboprop aircraft engine produced by Pratt & Whitney Canada.
  Its design was started in 1958, it first ran in February 1960, first flew on 30 May 1961, entered service in 1964 and has been continuously updated since.
  It consists of two basic sections: a gas generator with accessory gearbox and a free power turbine with reduction gearbox, and is often seemingly mounted backwards in an aircraft in so far as the intake is at the rear and the exhaust at the front.
  Many variants of the PT6 have been produced, not only as turboprops but also for helicopters, land vehicles, hovercraft, boats, as auxiliary power units and for industrial uses. By November 2015, 51,000 had been produced, had logged 400 million flight hours from 1963 to 2016. It is known for its reliability with an in-flight shutdown rate of 1 per 651,126 hours in 2016.
  The PT6A covers the power range between 580 and 1,940 shp while the PT6B/C are turboshaft variants for helicopters.
context_section_description: The rate at which parts deteriorate in a gas turbine is unbalanced insofar as the hottest parts need replacing or repairing more often than the cooler-running parts. If the hotter parts can be removed without disturbing the rest of the engine, for example without removing the complete engine from the aircraft, maintenance costs are reduced. It was achieved with the PT6 by having the hottest parts, the gas generator turbine and combustor, at the propeller end. They are removed without disturbing the rest of the engine with its connections to the aircraft. This arrangement was patented by designer Newland, one of the original PT6 team. A similar general arrangement with a free-turbine power take-off at the exhaust end ( the 1,000 shp P.181 engine) had been shown by Armstrong Siddeley Motors at the Farnborough Airshow in 1957.
  An early design improvement, incorporated in the PT6A-20, was the pipe diffuser patented by Vrana, another of the original PT6 team. It replaced the vaned type diffuser used in centrifugal compressors. The pipe diffuser became standard design practice for P&WC. Another design change improved the part-speed functioning of the compressor. It is common to bleed air from a compressor to make it work properly at low engine speeds. The PT6 has a bleed arrangement which reuses the bleed air by returning it in a tangential direction at the entry to the compressor, an idea patented by Schaum et al. and titled "Turbine Engine With Induced Pre-Swirl at Compressor Inlet". It acts like a variable vane and is known as a "Jet-Flap".
  All versions of the engine consist of two sections that can be easily separated for maintenance: a gas generator supplies hot pressurized gas to a free power turbine. The starter has to accelerate only the gas generator, making the engine easy to start, particularly in cold weather. Air enters the gas-generator through an inlet screen into the low-pressure axial compressor. This has three stages on small and medium versions of the engine and four stages on large versions. The air then flows into a single-stage centrifugal compressor, through a folded annular combustion chamber, and finally through a single-stage turbine that powers the compressors at about 45,000 rpm. Hot gas from the gas generator flows into the power turbine, which turns at about 30,000 rpm. It has one stage on the small engines and two stages on the medium and large ones. For turboprop use, this powers a two-stage planetary output reduction gearbox, which turns the propeller at a speed of 1,900 to 2,200 rpm. The exhaust gas then escapes through two side-mounted ducts in the power turbine housing. The turbines are concentric with the combustion chamber, reducing overall length.
  In most aircraft installations the PT6 is mounted so that the intake end of the engine is towards the rear of the aircraft, leading to it being known by many as the "back-to-front" engine. This places the power section at the front of the nacelle, where it can drive the propeller directly without the need for a long shaft. Intake air is usually fed to the engine via an underside mounted duct, and the two exhaust outlets are directed rearward. This arrangement aids maintenance by allowing the entire power section to be removed along with the propeller, exposing the gas-generator section. To facilitate rough-field operations, foreign objects are diverted from the compressor intake by inertial separators in the inlet. In some installation such as the PT6A-66B version in the Piaggio Avanti P180, the engine is reversed, with the propeller acting as a "pusher", the accessory gearbox facing the front of the aircraft.
caption: Epicyclic reduction gears on Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 gas turbine engine.
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