 | |
 Lycoming water tower in Williamsport, Pennsylvania | |
| Industry | Aerospace industry |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1845; 180 years ago (1845) |
| Founder | Ellen Louise Demorest |
| Headquarters | Williamsport, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Parent |
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| Website | lycoming |
Lycoming Engines is a major American manufacturer ofaircraft engines. With a factory inWilliamsport, Pennsylvania, Lycoming produces a line ofhorizontally opposed, air-cooled, four, six and eight-cylinder engines.
The company has built more than 325,000 piston aircraft engines and powers more than half the world's general aviation fleet, both rotary andfixed wing.[1]
Lycoming has been a principal pioneer of turbine engines for medium and large helicopters, and has also produced engines for small jetliners and business jets.[2][3][4]
Lycoming is an operating division ofAvco Corporation, itself a subsidiary ofTextron.[5][4][6]
Lycoming dates its founding to 1845 by "Madame Ellen Curtis Demorest".[7] However, the early history of the company (especially prior to 1860) is unclear;[8] biographer Ishbel Ross notes that the marriage of Ellen Louise Curtis toWilliam Jennings Demorest took place in 1858, somewhat later than the purported date of establishment of the company.[8] A few years later inNew York, between c. 1860 and 1887, the Demorests published fashion magazines and operated theDemorest Fashion and Sewing-Machine Company (sometimes known as theDemorest Manufacturing Company). They produced "Madame Demorest" and "Bartlett & Demorest"sewing machines and sold Ellen Demorest's innovative paper patterns for dressmaking.[8] During this period, Ellen Demorest patented several fashion accessories,[9][10] while her husband patented improvements to sewing machines[8] and an apparatus for thevulcanization of rubber.[11][12]
Around 1883, Gerrit S. Scofield & Frank M. Scofield (advertising agents from New York) bought the Demorest brand and the sewing machine business (the Demorests retained the magazine business), and constructed a factory inWilliamsport, Pennsylvania (inLycoming County).[8][13] At the urging of the newly established Williamsport Board of Trade, citizens investedUS$100, 000 in the new manufacturing facility, which employed 250 people.[8] The factory produced 50 to 60 sewing machines per day.[14]With the development of the "New York Bicycle" in 1891 (designed by employee S. H. Ellis), the company diversified its product offerings.[8][14] Until the early 1900s, the factory produced sewing machines, bicycles, typewriters, opera chairs and other products.[7][8][14]
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By 1907, the manufacture of sewing machines had become unprofitable for Demorest, and the company was sold and restructured as theLycoming Foundry and Machine Company, shifting its focus towardautomobile engine manufacture.[7][8] In 1910, the company supplied its first automobile engine toVelie,[15] and during the early post-World-War-I era, the company was a major supplier to Auburn (which produced theAuburn,Cord, andDuesenberg lines).
By 1920, Lycoming was producing 60,000 engines a year, with a 2,000-strong workforce. To handle the capacity, a new foundry complex was built inWilliamsport that year.[16] Eventually Lycoming became Auburn's principal supplier, and in 1927Errett Lobban Cord bought the company,[15] placing it under his Auburn Manufacturing umbrella group.
Among the engines Lycoming produced for Cord was an L-headstraight-eight engine of 298.5 cu. in. displacement that produced 125 horsepower. This was used in the Cord L-29. Lycoming also produced a double overhead cam straight 8 used in the legendary Duesenberg J series. This powerplant produced 265 horsepower, six times the power of a contemporary Model A Ford. A supercharged version, generating 325 horsepower, was installed in the Duesenberg SJ and SSJ models.
In 1929, Lycoming produced its first aviation engine, the nine-cylinderR-680radial.[7] This was a fairly successful design, and was used widely in lightaircraft, including Cord'sTravel Air.
In the 1930s, Lycoming made a number of attempts to develop successful high-power aircraft engines. The1 200hp (895 kW)O-1230 was Lycoming's attempt to produce an engine based on theUnited States Army Air Corpshyper engine concept, and used a variety of features to produce nearly1 hp/in3 (46 kW/L) ofengine displacement. However, by the O-1230's entry into service, it had been surpassed by other designs and theUS$500 000 investment was not recouped.
Another attempt was made to rescue the design by stacking two O-1230s to make the2 300 hp (1 700 kW)H engineH-2470 but the only design to use it, theVultee XP-54, never entered production. TheCurtiss XF14C was originally intended to be powered by the H-2470, but the engine's poor performance led to the adoption of an alternative radial engine on the prototype. (The XF14C did not enter production.)
Undeterred by the O-1230/H-2470's failure, Lycoming turned to an even larger design, the 36-cylinderXR-7755, the largest aviationpiston engine ever built. This design also experienced problems, and was only ready for use at the very end ofWorld War II, when the aviation world was turning toturbojets andturboprop engines to power future large aircraft.[17] There was apparently some interest in using it on theConvair B-36 Peacemakerbomber, but the 28-cylinderPratt & Whitney R-4360Wasp Major four-bank radial was used instead.
Through the 1920s and -30s, Lycoming had still been supplying automotive manufacturers with engines. However, these clients each slowly went out of business or switched toContinental engines for their vehicles. By 1931, the company was supplying automotive engines to only three companies:Auburn,Cord andDuesenburg, still all under the control ofCord.[16] These companies closed their doors in 1937,[18] after which Lycoming switched to exclusively designing and producing engines for aviation.[16] In the meantime, the Smith Engineering Corporation, an early manufacturer of controllable pitch propellers had been purchased by Cord and moved to Williamsport.[19][20]
In 1939 Cord re-organized all of his aviation holdings into the AVCO group, at which point the engine manufacturing company became "AVCO Lycoming". It also leased the government-ownedStratford Army Engine Plant inStratford, Connecticut, and producedWright radials under license. After the war, this plant was converted to produce theT53turboshaft engine, one of its more successful designs. From this point on the piston andturbine engine lines remained separate, with the piston lines being built in the original Williamsport factories, and turbines in Stratford.
By 1961, Lycoming produced 600 to 700 engines per month.[17] Its most successful post-war products were a series ofair-cooledflat-4 andflat-6general aviation engines. Most famous among these are theO-320 andO-360 four-cylinder engines, and theO-540 six-cylinder engine.[21][22] Many light aircraft are powered by versions of these engines, with power ratings in the100–360 hp (75–270 kW) range. Engines in this series also include theO-235 four-,O-580 six- andO-720 eight-cylinder engines, and the advancedturbocharged andfuel-injected450 hp (340 kW)TIGO-541 variant of the venerable (carbureted) O-540.
In the early 1980s, the general aviation market suddenly diminished and Lycoming's piston engine business was significantly impacted. Attempts were made to move some of the turbine production to Williamsport, but this led to a series ofquality control problems and eventually it was abandoned.
Another attempt to rescue Williamsport was made in introducing the "radical"SCORE engine, aWankel engine originally developed through a joint venture betweenCurtiss-Wright andJohn Deere. Curtiss-Wright lost interest in the design just as it was maturing and sold its interests in the project to Deere, which brought in Lycoming to sell the developed engine into the aviation markets. It was guaranteed a startup run byCessna, also owned by Textron. Just as production was ready to start, Cessna announced it was halting its small-aircraft business for an indefinite period, and SCORE was cancelled. The remains of the Deere licenses were later purchased by Rotary Power International, which briefly produced a340 hp (254 kW) version.
Textron purchased the company in 1985.[23] In 1994, Textron sold the Lycoming Turbine Engine Division, located inStratford, Connecticut, toAlliedSignal, who merged it with theGarrett Engine Division of AlliedSignal as part of AlliedSignal Aerospace, later becoming part ofHoneywell Aerospace in 1999.[24] Textron retained piston engine production in Williamsport.
Lycomings continue to power new light aircraft by fellow Textron division,Cessna Aircraft,[25] and byPiper,[26]Cirrus,[27]Diamond,[28] and others.Lycomings remain the most popular line of engines for U.S. Experimental / Amateur-Built (E/A-B) aircraft, surpassing the 5 next-most-popular brands, combined.[29]
The aircraft piston engine prefixes are:[30][failed verification]
| Model name | Config- uration | Displacement | Power | Intro- duction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lycoming DEL-120 | I4 | 117 cu in (1.92 L) | 205 hp | 2013 |
| Lycoming O-145 | O4 | 144.5 cu in (2.37 L) | 55 hp | 1938 |
| Lycoming IO-233 | O4 | 233.3 cu in (3.82 L) | 100 hp | 2008 |
| Lycoming O-235 | O4 | 233.3 cu in (3.82 L) | 100 hp | 1942 |
| Lycoming O-290 | O4 | 289 cu in (4.74 L) | 140 hp | 1942 |
| Lycoming O-320 | O4 | 319.8 cu in (5.24 L) | 150 hp | 1953 |
| Lycoming O-340 | O4 | 340.4 cu in (5.58 L) | 170 hp | 1954 |
| Lycoming O-360 | O4 | 361 cu in (5.92 L) | 180 hp | 1955 |
| Lycoming IO-360 | O4 | 361 cu in (5.92 L) | 200 hp | 1963 |
| Lycoming IO-390 | O4 | 389 cu in (6.37 L) | 210 hp | 2009 |
| Lycoming O-435 | O6 | 424 cu in (6.95 L) | 212 hp | 1942 |
| Lycoming O-480 | O6 | 479.6 cu in (7.86 L) | 340 hp | 1954 |
| Lycoming O-540 | O6 | 541.5 cu in (8.87 L) | 300 hp | 1957 |
| Lycoming TIO-541 | O6 | 541.5 cu in (8.87 L) | 310 hp | 1965 |
| Lycoming IO-580 | O6 | 583 cu in (9.55 L) | 300 hp | 1997 |
| Lycoming GSO-580 | O8 | 578 cu in (9.47 L) | 400 hp | 1948 |
| Lycoming R-680 | R9 | 680 cu in (11.14 L) | 330 hp | 1930 |
| Lycoming IO-720 | O8 | 721 cu in (11.82 L) | 400 hp | 1961 |
| Lycoming O-1230 | O12 | 1,233.9 cu in (20.22 L) | 1000 hp | |
| Lycoming H-2470 | H24 | 2,467.8 cu in (40.44 L) | 2,300 hp | |
| Lycoming XR-7755 | IR36 | 7,756.3 cu in (127.10 L) | 5,000 hp |
Lycoming was one of the principal pioneers of turbine engines --turboshaft to be precise—for medium- and heavy-lift helicopters, some of which have found other applications as well. Its 1,400 horsepower (1,000 kW) T53 hybridfree turbine /shaft turbine engine initially powered theBell UH-1 "Huey", and Lycoming's 4,000 horsepower (3,000 kW) T55 is the main power for the twin-turbine, twin-rotorBoeing CH-47 Chinook. Lycoming turbines have powered other helicopters, also.[2][3][4][32]
Variants and derivatives have powered various turboprop and turbofan aircraft, as well, including theOV-1 Mohawk military aircraft,BAe 146 jetliner,Canadair Challenger business jet, and others.[2][3][4][32]
| Model name | Configuration | Power |
|---|---|---|
| Lycoming T53 | Turboshaft | 1,451 hp |
| Lycoming T55 | Turboshaft | 4,867 hp |
| Lycoming PLF1 | ||
| Lycoming LTS101/LPT101 | Turboshaft/Turboprop | 675 hp |
| Lycoming ALF 502 | Turbofan | 6,700 lbf |
| Lycoming AGT1500 | Gas turbine | 1,500 hp |
| Lycoming TF40 | Gas turbine | 4,000 hp[33] |
