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康维尔是一家美国的飞行器和火箭制造商。于1943年伏尔提飞机公司和联合飞机公司并购时成立,之后生产了一系列领先于时代的飞机,如B-36轰炸机 ,F-102战斗机和F-106战斗机等。康维尔也负责制造了第一枚宇宙神火箭,用于水星计划。 The company's subsequent Atlas-Centaur design continued this success and derivatives of the design remain in use as of 2010. In 1994 most of the company's divisions were sold by then-owners 通用动力公司 to 麦道公司和洛克希德公司, with the remaining components deactivated in 1996.
成立
The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, whose name was in the course of time changed to Convair, the Convair Corporation and similar names, was an American aircraft, rocket, and spacecraft company for the design, development, and manufacturing of such high-technology aerospace products, and/or sub-units of them, or else a subsidiary of a larger corporation. It existed as a company from 1943 until 1994, although the Consolidated Aircraft company had existed before that, and had produced aircraft that were important in the early years of 第二次世界大战, especially the PBY Catalina for the 美国海军, theRoyal Canadian Air Force, the British flying forces, and some others. The Catalina remained in production through May 1945, and a total of over 4,000 of them were built. What was soon to be called "Convair" (first unofficially, and then officially), was created in 1943 by the merger of the Consolidated Aircraft Company and the Vultee Aircraft Company. This merger produced a largeairplane company of that time period, though still smaller than the giants like 道格拉斯公司,波音, and Lockheed. Convair always had most of its research, design, and manufacturing operations inSan Diego County of Southern California, and nearby counties, though other locations were involved, as well.
从喷气时代到太空时代
1953年3月,all of the Convair company was bought by the 通用动力, a conglomerate of military and high-technology companies, and it became officially the Convair Division within General Dynamics.[1]
After the beginning of the Jet Age of military fighters and bombers, Convair was a pioneer of the delta-winged aircraft design, along with the French 达索航天 aircraft company, which designed and built the Mirage fighter planes.
One of Convair's most famous products was the 10-engined Convair B-36 strategic bomber, burning four turbojets & turning six pusher props driven by Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial piston engines. The Convair B-36 was the largest landbased piston engined bomber in the world. The Atlas missile, the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart delta-winged interceptors, and the delta-winged B-58 Hustler supersonic intercontinental nuclear bomber were all Convair products. For a period of time in the 1960s, Convair manufactured its own line of jet commercial airliners, the Convair 880 and Convair 990, but this did not turn out to be a profitable business. However, Convair found that it was profitable to become an aviation subcontractor and to manufacture large subsections of airliners, such as fuselages for the larger airliner companies, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, and Lockheed.
The Convair Division produced its own airplane designs, such as several airliners, until 1965, when it shifted from these toairframe/aerostructure subcontracting projects for other companies. Convair also shifted more money and effort into its outer space products, especially rocket boosters. The Convair-made and cryogenically-fueled 宇宙神导弹 ICBM for the U.S. Air Force had within just a handful of years become obsolete, and had been replaced by the room-temperature liquid-fueled Titan II missile and the solid-fueled Minuteman missile.
Convair worked hard to make its Atlas rocket product into a very reliable space booster rocket, especially when combined with theCentaur upper stage to form the Atlas-Centaur rocket for launching geosynchronous communication satellites and space probes. The Centaur rocket was also designed, developed, and produced by Convair, and it was the first widely-used outer space rocket to use the all-cryogenic fuel-oxidizer combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The use of this liquid hydrogen - liquid oxygen combination in the Centaur was an important direct precursor to the use of the same fuel-oxidizer combination in the Saturn S-II second stage and the Saturn S-IVB third stage of the gigantic 土星5号 moon rocket of the阿波罗计划. The S-IVB had earlier also been used as the second stage of the smaller Saturn IB rocket, such as the one which was used to launch 阿波罗7号. The Centaur upper stage was first designed and developed for launching the Surveyor lunar landers, beginning in 1966, to augment the delta-V of the Atlas rockets and give them enough payload capability to deliver the required mass of the Surveyors to the Moon.
More than 100 Convair-produced Atlas-Centaur rockets (including those with their successor designations) were used to successfully launch over 100 satellites, and among their many other outer space missions, they launched the 先驱者10号和先驱者11号深空探测器。 space probes, the first two to be launched on trajectories that carried them out of the 太阳系.
In addition to aircraft, missiles and space vehicles, Convair developed the large Charactron vacuum tubes, which were the precursors of modern cathode ray tube (CRT) computer displays,[2] and to give an example of a minor product, the CORDIC algorithms, which is widely used today to calculate trigonometric functions in calculators,field-programmable gate arrays, and other small electronic systems.
Dissolution
In 1994, the General Dynamics Corporation split and sold the original Convair Division, along with other General Dynamics aerospace units that had been swept into it over the decades. The airframe/aerostructures manufacturing company and the space boosters company (both mostly in California) were sold to the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. The Fort Worth, Texas factory and its associated engineering locations and laboratories - which had been previously used for the manufacture of hundreds of General DynamicsF-111战斗轰炸机 fighter-bombers and F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters for the U.S. Air Force, along with dozens of smaller projects- were sold, along with all intellectual property and the legal rights to the products that were being designed and built within, to the Lockheed Corporation. In 1996, General Dynamics deactivated all of the remaining legal entities of the Convair Division.
大事记
Due to name changes and acquisitions over the years it is often difficult to sort out the exact sequence of events. In order to clarify things, the following timeline was created by consulting a variety of sources to resolve discrepancies.
- 1923 Consolidated Aircraft Corporation formed by Major Ruben Fleet
- 1929 Aviation Corporation (AVCO) holding company formed by multiple participants
- 1932 Airplane Development Corporation formed by Gerard F. "Jerry" Vultee; Errett Lobban Cord soon takes it over
- 1934 AVCO acquired the Airplane Development Corporation from Cord and formed the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation (AMC)
- 1936 AMC liquidated to form the Vultee Aircraft Division, an autonomous subsidiary of AVCO
- 1939 Vultee Aircraft Division of AVCO reorganized as an independent company known as Vultee Aircraft, Inc.
- 1941 Consolidated Aircraft Corporation sold to AVCO
- 1943 Consolidated-Vultee, also known as Convair, formed by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft; still controlled by AVCO
- 1947 Convair acquired by the Atlas Corporation
- 1947 AVCO name changed to Avco Manufacturing Corporation
- 1953 or 1954 Convair acquired by General Dynamics
- 1959 Avco Manufacturing Corporation name changed to Avco Corporation
- 1985 Avco Corporation acquired by Textron
- 1985 General Dynamics formed the Space Systems Division from the Convair Space Program
- 1994 Space Systems Division sold to Martin Marietta
- 1994 Convair Aircraft Structures unit sold to McDonnell Douglas
The above timeline was based on the following sources:
- Textron Lycoming Turbine Engine, a Company History of AVCO and Lycoming/Textron
- Avco Financial Services, Inc. from the Lehman Brothers Collection - Twentieth Century Business Archives
- Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission
- General Dynamics Corporation, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission
- Central Manufacturing Co. of Connersville, Indiana, a history of Cord, AVCO, and others
产品
飞行器
- Vultee XA-41 (1944)
- Convair XB-53 (1945)
- Convair B-36 Peacemaker (1946)
- Stinson 108 (1946)
- Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947)
- Convair CV-240 (1947)
- Convair CV-600 (1965)
- Convair XB-46 (1947)
- Convair XC-99 (1947)
- Convair XF-92 (1948)
- R3Y Tradewind (1950)
- Convair X-6 (1951)
- Convair YB-60 (1952)
- F-102 Delta Dagger (1953)
- F2Y Sea Dart (1953)
- Convair XFY Pogo (1954)
- Convair P6Y (1955)
- B-58 Hustler (1956)
- F-106 Delta Dart (1956)
- Convair 880 jet airliner (1959)
- Convair KINGFISH (1959)
- Convair 990 Coronado jet airliner (1961)
- Convair Model 48 Charger (1964)
- Convair Model 49 (1967-project)
Note: U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft designations that begin with "X" are merely experimental models of aircraft only made in small numbers. Military aircraft designations that begin with "Y" are developmental models made in small batches, which may or may not have subsequently entered large-scale production.
In the former designation system the Navy and the Marine Corps used, a final letter of "Y" identified a Convair or a Consolidated product, such as the PBY-5 flying boat.
导弹和火箭
- MX-774 (1948)
- RIM-2 Terrier (1951)
- XGAM-71 Buck Duck (1955)
- Pye Wacket (1957)
- Convair X-11 (1957)
- Convair X-12 (1958)
- SM-65 Atlas The Atlas ICBM Air Force missile (1957)
- FIM-43 Redeye (1960)
- Atlas rocket The Atlas civilian space booster
- Centaur
- Atlas-Centaur and its successor-designations, all of which combined an Atlas booster with a Centaur upper stage - a civilian rocket to launch spacecraft to outer space. Not calling all of them "Atlas-Centaurs" is something of an exercise in semantic hair-splitting. Altogether, well-over 100 of these have been launched
参考资料
- ^ General Dynamics Corporation. U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission. [2006-03-31].
- ^ Charactron Tube. Computing at Chilton, of Atlas Computer Laboratory, Chilton. 2006-08-05 [2006-10-22].
外部链接
普惠R-4360
普惠 R-4360 大黄蜂(局部图) | |
类型 | 四列星型活塞发动机 |
原产国 | 美国 |
制造商 | 普惠公司 |
首次运转 | 1944年 |
使用机种 |
B-50轰炸机 C-97 C-119 B-36轰炸机 |
制造数量 | 18,697 |
前型 | R-2180-A Twin Hornet |
后继型 | R-2180 Twin Wasp E |
普惠 R-4360 “大黄蜂”(Wasp Major)是普惠公司于第二次世界大战期间研制的一款大型星型活塞发动机。它是普惠公司“黄蜂“家族中的最后一款,亦是集普惠活塞发动机先进技术于一身的巅峰之作,但在它装备飞机投入使用前战争就已结束。尽管如此,R-4360仍成为了在涡轮喷气发动机和涡轮螺旋浆发动机出现之前的最后一代大型活塞式飞机的动力源。
设计开发
The R-4360 was a 28-cylinder four-row air cooled radial engine. Each row of pistons was slightly offset from the previous, forming a semi-helical arrangement to facilitate efficient airflow cooling of the successive rows of cylinders, with the spiraled cylinder setup inspiring the engine's "corncob" nickname. A mechanical supercharger geared at 6.374:1 ratio to engine speed provided forced induction, while the propeller was geared at 0.375:1 so that the tips did not reach inefficient supersonic speeds.
Although reliable in flight, the Wasp Major was maintenance-intensive. Improper starting technique could foul all 56 spark plugs, which would require hours to clean or replace. As with most piston aircraft engines of the era, the time between overhauls of the Wasp Major was about 600 hours when used in commercial service.
Engine displacement was 4,362.50 in³ (71.5 L), hence the model designation. Initial models developed 3,000 hp (2,240 kW), and later models 3,500 hp but one model delivered 4,300 hp (3200 kW) using two large turbochargers in addition to the supercharger. Engines weighed 3,482 to 3,870 lb (1,579 to 1,755 kg), giving a power to weight ratio of 1.11 hp/lb (1.83 kW/kg), which was matched or exceeded by very few contemporary engines.
Wasp Majors were produced between 1944 and 1955; 18,697 were built.
A derivative engine, the R-2180-E Twin Wasp E, was essentially the R-4360 "cut in half". It had two rows of seven cylinders each, and was used on the postwar Saab 90 Scandia airliner.
装备机型
改型
性能诸元
基本参数
- 型号: 28-cylinder supercharged air-cooled four-row radial engine
- 腔径: 5.75 in. (146.05 mm)
- 行程: 6.00 in. (152.4 mm)
- 排量: 4,362.5 in³ (71.49 L)
- 长度: 96.5 in. (2 451 mm)
- 直径: 55 in (1397 mm)
- 干重: 3,870 lb (1,755 kg)
组件
- 气门: Poppet, two valves per cylinder
- 机械增压器: Gear-driven single stage variable speed centrifugal type supercharger
- 涡轮增压器: General Electric CHM-2
- 供油系统: Stromberg four-barrel pressure carburetor
- 油料类型: 108/135 octane gasoline
- 冷却系统: Air-cooled
性能
参见
参考资料
外部链接
- Pratt & Whitney R-4360 page
- National Museum of the USAF– R-4360 fact sheet
- More info
- Information about the 4360 from the Aircraft Engine Historical Society includes photos of the VDT engine.
- Portrait of 3,500 Horses July 1947 cutaway illustration of Wasp Major