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The Montreal area has a well developed aerospace industry with a continuous need for young engineers broadly educated in aircraft propulsion. To fulfil this requirement, three Montreal universities: Concordia University, École Polytechnique, and McGill University, with the cooperation of interested industrial enterprises, launched a joint Master of Engineering (Aerospace) program. It included several courses directly related to aircraft propulsion such as: Advanced Turbomachinery and Propulsion, Gas Turbine Design, Fuel Control Systems for Combustion Engines, Vibration Problems in Rotating Machinery, etc. They were supported by prerequisite basic courses. Some of these courses have also been made as electives to these undergraduate students in Mechanical Engineering Program who want to specialise in Aeronautics. The paper gives a more detailed description of courses and laboratories from the point of view of aircraft propulsion teaching.

There is a need in the gas turbine industry for an inexpensive fuel control unit for the new breed of high performance small gas turbine engines. To answer this demand, it is proposed to couple an automotive type fuel pump with a stepper motor driven in microstepping mode. The speed of the motor and the fuel flow rate can be controlled by the frequency signal from the computer. This concept is particularly well suited for the gas turbine engine fuel supply where the fuel pressure at low speed is low and the fuel leakage in the pump is not high. The stepper motor driven by a microstepping driver can reach high speeds of several thousands rpm. The unit can be installed inside the fuel, supply tank, as is the case with electric fuel pumps found in automobiles. Prototypes have been made and tested. Both steady state and transient response are showing an impressive performance of such an electronic fuel metering pump.

The potential benefits of digital electronic controls, including increased flexibility and lower cost, have not yet been fully applied to the small gas turbine engines of remotely piloted vehicles. For these applications, the need for low cost is a strong factor in design. To address this situation, a new, simple and inexpensive electronically controlled metering system for small gas turbine engines is proposed. The system incorporates a diaphragm type valve keeping a constant differential pressure across a stepper motor actuated metering valve. To optimize the design, mathematical models were created for computer simulation. Experimental tests performed on a prototype showed that it can adequately meet the fuel schedules of small gas turbines. The simulation models were validated against the test results and were used in design optimization.