MAX Torque confusion

[NAUNUAUB]

Hi all,

I am curently learning this wonderfull module and ther is something I am not clearly understanding regarding max torque. I must confess I have limited knowledge on helicopter and that's might be why ! I read the manual, chuck's guide and even a real aircraft manual with no joy to understand.

It basically says on the engine power limitation that max torque is 115% shown red on engine MFD page, and that anything above 100% should be transient and 6 sec limited (talking dual engine).

Meanwhile, the MAX Q DE on perf page displays 30 minutes max torque and is usually well above 115%.

What is the maximum  torque at the end ? And what does this 6 sec limitation for transient means if you could afford 30 minutes above 115% ?

Thank you for your clarifications !

Happy flights

 

[NeedzWD40]

The Max Q torque indications are the absolute theoretical maximums you could pull on the drive components, potentially imparting damage to the aircraft. Go into them if you absolutely must, but do so with extreme caution and limit how long you stay in those ranges. I don't believe this is currently simulated on the damage model.

Your maximum torque should be treated as 100% in all but emergency conditions. Exceeding that value doesn't mean everything falls apart, but limit how long you do so, as excessive time above that value can damage the aircraft. If you need a quick second at 105%, make sure that's a need along the lines of "If I don't clear this tree, we're dead" and not "I need extra power to get 100% fuel, 1200 rounds of 30mm, and 16 missiles off the ground!"

[NAUNUAUB]

Thank you very much for your answer.

Thats what I supposed but the 30 minutes screwed me because it appears a huge time potential for a "desperate extra power needed" !

[ShuRugal]

On 4/13/2025 at 3:51 AM, NAUNUAUB said:

30 minutes screwed me because it appears a huge time potential for a "desperate extra power needed" !

Not if the nearest friendly territory is 30 minutes of single-engine flying away.  

[Leg2ion]

 

On 4/13/2025 at 8:51 AM, NAUNUAUB said:

Thats what I supposed but the 30 minutes screwed me because it appears a huge time potential for a "desperate extra power needed" !

In addition to that of @NeedzWD40 (especially the "I need extra power to get 100% fuel, 1200 rounds of 30mm, and 16 missiles off the ground!" ) believe those times and min/max values will feed into any pilots post flight report  - ie xxx% torque recorded for so many minutes on No1 Engine/I entered the 6 second band for 3 seconds etc. Whilst there are bands of 'allowable' limits and the implications to the aircrew may be minor - those values will be fed into the maintenance policy for the aircraft resulting in either a lot of work for the maintainers or the life of certain components in the engine/transmissions could be reduced.

So in essence you're allowed a certain amount of limited time in certain output bands (Ng/Np/Tq/TGT/Nr) plus incursions into transient zones with possibly no penalty - but if you exceed it or enter it so many times then you may need to start doing some type of penalty maintenance on the components.  The intent is aircrew/aircraft survivability - knowingly allowing limits to be exceeded - you may end up having to do some internal inspections or worst case reject an engine but you have your driver and aircraft back.

Now, sometimes pilot reporting in instances such as these can be historically described as 'not the best' flavoured with a little bit of poetic license so Health Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) has been introduced which record all these values automatically, and post flight the maintainers interrogate it to see what values have been reached - the download system flagging exceedances which then need to be cleared with appropriate maintenance being undertaken. It cuts out the ambiguity of "Chief - I might have had an overtorque. I think I may have ..." to a definite idea of what had happened.