January 24 marks 120 years since the birth of Arkady Shvetsov – the founder of the Perm Engine Building School

24.01.2012

January 24 marks 120 years since the birth of Arkady Shvetsov – the founder of the Perm Engine Building School

January 24, 2012, marked 120 years since the birth of Arkady Dmitrievich Shvetsov, designer of aviation engines, and one of the founders of the Perm Engine Company and Aviadvigatel.

The name of Shvetsov is well known in Perm, because a street and an aviation college in the city are named after the famous designer, and his bust is on display in the factory square. But despite the publication of many books and articles, interest in this pioneer of Russian engine-building is ever-strong, and his role as founder of the Perm school of engine building has over time become even better known and more important.

Arkady Shvetsov left a rich legacy. From the 1950s to 1980s, the Perm Design School gave Russia and the world a whole range of gas turbine engines, famous for their value and reliability, and enriched the science and practice of engine-building with original designs and technological solutions. The engine factory founded in 1934 by Arkady Shvetsov and Iosif Poberezhsky became the largest industrial complex in Perm and in the country, with tens of thousands of jobs. And today Perm Engine Company, Aviadvigatel, Proton-PM, and Reduktor-PM, all formerly parts of a single company, are still successfully working and developing.

Aviadvigatel has marked the 120^th anniversary by producing a photo album entitled Chief Designer A.D. Shvetsov, containing a wonderful collection of previously unknown photographs, letters, and facts about Arkady Dmitrievich’s life presented by his relatives on the anniversary. Aviadvigatel will hold their traditional annual competition for design work, awarding the winners the Arkady Shvetsov Prize. The History Museum of the Perm Engine Company has opened a new exhibit — “Shvetsov — Man, Designer, Leader”. And Perm television journalists have prepared a film about Arkady Dmitrievich Shvetsov for the series ‘Creating the Future’, funded by the Russian Federal Agency for Print and Mass Media. The film will be shown on the UralInformTV television station and carried by all major stations in the region.

And it may be considered that the successful implementation of the factory’s production plans, the opening of a production facility unique in Russia, for applying ceramic thermal protective coatings onto turbine blades, testing the gas generator for the upcoming PD-14 engine, adopting a development strategy for the Perm Engine Company up to 2020 which offers significant expansion in production and sales volumes, mastering production of a fifth-generation aviation engine, and large-scale reorganization of existing production on the principles of lean technology, all make for a fitting birthday present for the founder of the Perm Design Bureau and the mass-production factory.

Additional information:

The Big Biographical Encyclopaedia, 2009:

Shvetsov Arkady Dmitrievich (1892-1953). A Soviet aviation engine designer, general-lieutenant in the engineering-technical service. A Hero of Socialist Labour (1942). A Doctor of Technical Sciences (1940). In 1921 he graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical Institute. In 1923 together with a group of designers he developed the powerful (750 hp) M-8RAM aviation engine. In 1926 the new Shvetsov M-11 engine was put into mass production, and in various different versions is still in use today. It presented the first solutions to a number of different important design issues: casting the head cylinder from aluminium alloy, jointed to a steel cylinder, a divided crankshaft and gas distribution with individual cam shafts for each cylinder. Beginning in 1934, Shvetsov was the chief designer at the aviation engine works in Perm. In this period, he oversaw the development of a number of piston radial engines in the ASh family of air-cooled engines, with high operational and technical specifications (ASh-21, ASh-62IR, ASh-82FN, and others). For these engines, Shvetsov developed a pendulum damper on a torque oscillating center crankshaft, a compact two-speed shifter, a system of direct fuel injection, he developed the profile taking into account the elastic behaviour of the crank shafts at high load with sliding bearings, presented a system of balancing inertial forces for the second version of the radial engine, a system of combined pressurizing for the reciprocating engine using the energy from the exhaust in the turbocompressor, a floating seat for the exhaust vents, and a high-powered transmission for helicopter rotors. A.D. Shvetsov founded the school for air-cooled engine design. In 1946 and 1950 he was chosen as a Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He won the Stalin Prize four times (1942, 1943, 1946, and 1948).

Further information:

Perm Engine Company (PMZ) is a mass producer of aviation engines for civil and military applications, as well as industrial gas turbine units for power stations and gas transportation. PMZ is part of the United Engine Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of OBORONPROM specializing in engine-building assets.

Aviadvigatel is a leading Russian design bureau developing gas-turbine engines for aviation and industrial applications. Aviadvigatel is part of the United Engine Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of OBORONPROM specializing in engine-building assets.

OBORONPROM is a multi-faceted machine-building group of companies, founded in 2002. It is part of the Russian Technologies group of companies. Its primary activities include helicopter building (Russian Helicopters) and engine-building (UEC).