On the Record With
Dr. SAM WILLIAMS, PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, WILLIAMS INTERNATIONAL

On display here and already flying is the Williams FJ44-3, the newest and most powerful engine in Williams International's mainstay FJ44 family and the powerplant for Cessna's new Citation CJ3.

"It's an outstanding engine" says company founder and president Dr. Sam Williams, who says that the 3,000-pound-thrust FJ44-3 met its fuel burn and thrust targets on its first run. "It's a big program and a great airplane."

With 25 percent more power than the FJ44-2, the new engine is a major step up in performance for the family. The one-piece, machined-from-solid swept fan is bigger than that of the -2, but the core is the same size.

Much of the thrust increase "is from improved efficiency," says Dr. Williams. "We get more power out of the core, with more airflow and a higher pressure ratio." New aerodynamic technology has been applied throughout the engine to increase the airflow and performance.

Another change is that the FJ44-3 has a dual-channel full-authority digital engine control (FADEC), the first in its class; earlier engines have had a single FADEC with a hydromechanical back-up. This is also the first FJ44 variant to be all-Williams, with no Rolls-Royce components.

Dr. Williams says that the FJ44-3 was selected on a competitive basis. Presumably, the competitor was Pratt & Whitney, which produces the 2,800-pound-thrust PW530 for the Citation Bravo and which announced the PW600 three years ago to compete with the FJ44. As Dr. Williams cautioned in 2001: "If others start endeavoring to penetrate our engine sector, we will move to bigger engines."

The FJ44-3 is a valuable win for Williams International, because larger engines command higher prices.

As Williams International spools up production of the FJ44-3 and prepares to produce the EJ22 for the Eclipse, the company is carrying out a major overhaul of its already very modern (and highly secure) production plant in Ogden, Utah. "We're adding buildings and updating all of the automation in the plant," says Dr. Williams, "and we believe that Ogden is the most advanced, most highly automated engine facility in the world."

New techniques at Ogden include ultra-high-speed machining, which is cleaner, cooler and more productive than earlier high-speed technology, and more-agile machine tools that can fabricate more-complex and more-efficient shapes.

The radical EJ22 engine for the Eclipse 500 has flown more than 30 hours on a Sabreliner test-bed and was close to making its first flight on the Eclipse in late August. The engines delivered to date have been built partly at Ogden, and partly at the company's Walled Lake, Mich., headquarters.

They are "production engines from the process standpoint," says Dr. Williams; the engine parts are built on production-type machines. However, he adds, "there are still design iterations going on to improve the performance, and that will continue for a while."

By Bill Sweetman