Rolls Royce Aircraft Engine Manual

(Redirected from Rolls-Royce Aircraft Piston Engines)

A preserved Rolls-Royce Griffon 58, one of the last Rolls-Royce piston engines to be produced. The red and white 'dumb bell' object to the left of the engine is an air raid siren exhibit

Rolls-Royce produced a range of piston engine types for aircraft use in the first half of the 20th Century. Production of own-design engines ceased in 1955 with the last versions of the Griffon; licensed production of Teledyne Continental Motorsgeneral aviation engines was carried out by the company in the 1960s and 1970s.

Examples of Rolls-Royce aircraft piston engine types remain airworthy today with many more on public display in museums.

AIRCRAFT MANUAL. Rolls Royce Griffon Aero Engine Manual ROLLS ROYCE GRIFFON 74-7 MAINTENANCE MANUAL. ROLLS ROYCE PUBLICATION. 120 Pages, scanned direct from original, in FULL COLOR, Presented as a High resolution PDF. In achieving its world record time on wing of over 40,500 hours, demonstrated the superior performance of the Rolls-Royce three-shaft engine. By far the quietest engine on the 757-200 and -300 (6dB more margin to Chapter 3), with ample margin to the Chapter 4 limits - favouring extended operation from noise-sensitive airfields during curfew.

WWI[edit]

The AE engine family was initially developed for defence applications, but constant development of the common core has developed a range of highly robust and versatile engines. The business jet variants are the AE 3007C series for the Cessna Citation aircraft and the AE 3007A1 and AE 3007A2 series that have evolved with the Embraer airframe.

In 1915, the Eagle, Falcon, and Hawk engines were developed in response to wartime needs. The Eagle was very successful, especially for bombers. It was scaled down by a factor of 5:4 to make the Falcon or by deleting one bank of its V12 cylinders to make the Hawk. The smaller engines were intended for fighter aircraft. Subsequently, it was enlarged to make the Condor which saw use in airships.^[1]

Inter-war years[edit]

The Rolls-Royce Kestrel

The Kestrel was a post-war redesign of the Eagle featuring wet cylinder liners in (two) common cylinder blocks. It was developed into the superchargedPeregrine and later the Goshawk.^[2]

Developed concurrently with the Kestrel was the unusual Rolls-Royce Eagle XVIX engine that was cancelled in favour of the Kestrel despite performing well on the test stand.

The Buzzard was an enlargement of the Kestrel ^[3] of Condor size, developed in its most extreme form into the Rolls-Royce R racing engine used for the Schneider Trophy competition.^[4]

The Vulture of 1939 was essentially two Peregrines on a common crankshaft in an X-24 configuration, both of these types being deemed unsuccessful.^[5]

WWII and beyond[edit]

The Rolls-Royce Merlin, and later the development of the Buzzard, the Rolls-Royce Griffon were the two most successful designs for Rolls-Royce to serve in the Second World War, the Merlin powering RAF fighters the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, fighter/bomber de Havilland Mosquito, Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers and also allied aircraft such as the American P-51 Mustang and some marks of Kittyhawk.

Experimental engines were developed as alternatives for high performance aircraft such as the H-24 configuration Rolls-Royce Eagle 22,^[6] the two-strokeRolls-Royce Crecy^[7] and the Rolls-Royce Pennine^[8] and Rolls-Royce Exe, the Exe being the only one of these last three engines to fly.^[9] However the successful development of the Merlin and Griffon, and the introduction of jet engines precluded significant production of these types.

Production of Rolls-Royce designed aircraft piston engines ceased in 1955 with the last variants of the Griffon.^[10] Between 1961 and 1981 Rolls-Royce was licensed to build the Teledyne Continental range of light aircraft piston engines including the Continental O-520.^[11]

Survivors[edit]

As of 2017 examples of the Falcon, Griffon, Kestrel and Merlin remain airworthy.^[12]

Engines on display[edit]