27.955—Fuel flow.
(a) General.
The fuel system for each engine must be shown to provide the engine with at least 100 percent of the fuel required under each operating and maneuvering condition to be approved for the rotorcraft including, as applicable, the fuel required to operate the engine(s) under the test conditions required by § 27.927. Unless equivalent methods are used, compliance must be shown by test during which the following provisions are met except that combinations of conditions which are shown to be improbable need not be considered.
(1)
The fuel pressure, corrected for critical accelerations, must be within the limits specified by the engine type certificate data sheet.
(2)
The fuel level in the tank may not exceed that established as the unusable fuel supply for that tank under § 27.959, plus the minimum additional fuel necessary to conduct the test.
(3)
The fuel head between the tank outlet and the engine inlet must be critical with respect to rotorcraft flight attitudes.
(4)
The critical fuel pump (for pump-fed systems) is installed to produce (by actual or simulated failure) the critical restriction to fuel flow to be expected from pump failure.
(5)
Critical values of engine rotation speed, electrical power, or other sources of fuel pump motive power must be applied.
(7)
The fuel filter required by § 27.997 must be blocked to the degree necessary to simulate the accumulation of fuel contamination required to activate the indicator required by § 27.1305(q).
(b) Fuel transfer systems.
If normal operation of the fuel system requires fuel to be transferred to an engine feed tank, the transfer must occur automatically via a system which has been shown to maintain the fuel level in the engine feed tank within acceptable limits during flight or surface operation of the rotorcraft.
(c) Multiple fuel tanks.
If an engine can be supplied with fuel from more than one tank, the fuel systems must, in addition to having appropriate manual switching capability, be designed to prevent interruption of fuel flow to that engine, without attention by the flightcrew, when any tank supplying fuel to that engine is depleted of usable fuel during normal operation, and any other tank that normally supplies fuel to the engine alone contains usable fuel.