[mashabox]

the talk on pprune is about RR replacing the engines so the aircraft can be used , repairing the ones which need the new bearing box then replacing them out - all at RR`s cost.

[chuecfafresslds]

And RR don't have many engines lying around, it's going to be a fair wait for it all to be sorted out.

[mashabox]

20 days to build a new engine from scratch


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UazsDDFsS7Q

more links to follow on there - itas actually a good watch

[chuecfafresslds]

Hmm, I wonder who will get priority with engines? An A380 sitting in a hanger costs a lot of money in lost revenue.

[mashabox]

QF most likely - as they have them grounded - the others are flying still

btw i was wrong , its 36 hours for a new engine off the production line


argh right its 20 days from the first parts being bolted together to the engine being on the lorry.

now the question is - with the A380 delyas in production - there might be some flexability

[chuecfafresslds]

That sounds better! I was thinking 20 days to build, and then you need to add transportation!

Yeah you would think it would be Qantas, but we'll see.

[Apparpsmose]

So the media pretty much is going to pick on Qantas for a bit. What would be every day operational issues get highlighted. So far we've had...

• Lightening Strike
• Bird Strike

[Apparpsmose]

20 days to build a new engine from scratch


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UazsDDFsS7Q

more links to follow on there - itas actually a good watch

That is a good watch. Though forme perhaps could have been a bit more technical. It's kind of funny how much the RR executive jerks off over the Trent brand of engines. I bet he wouldn't be having such a good time right now.

Interesting report...

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce says up to 14 Rolls Royce engines on the airline's A380s will need to be inspected and potentially replaced.

Rolls Royce had indicated about 40 A380 engines needed to be swapped worldwide, Mr Joyce said.

The airline expects to know within two days how many engines need to be taken off its planes so Rolls Royce can make a modification.

"Rolls Royce are still working through the criteria for which engines need to be changed," Rolls Royce had made changes to the design and manufacture of new A380 engines to stop oil leaks, but it had not done so to the engines on the Qantas A380 fleet.

"If this was significant, and was known to be significant, we would have liked to have known about that," Mr Joyce said.

"It doesn't look like it is a significant modification, but it is a modification that has an impact on how the engines are performing and it is a modification that indicates whether you are going to have a problem or not with the engine."

Rolls Royce was responsible for all maintenance on the A380 engines, Mr Joyce said.

He said the modification made by Rolls Royce to the engines on the production line appeared to be an indicator of potential problems.

Normally any modification made by an engine manufacturer would be retrofitted to each engine when it returned to the workshop for routine inspection and maintenance, Mr Joyce said.

"If this incident hadn't occurred, eventually all these engines would have had this modification," he said.

"Now because it is an indicator, we are not taking any risks.

"We're taking the engines off and making sure this modification is in place before the engines are put back on the aircraft."

Qantas is in talks with Airbus to replace some of its existing Rolls Royce engines with new engines from planes still in production on the Airbus assembly line. Sneaky RR. [no]

[chuecfafresslds]

That is a good watch. Though forme perhaps could have been a bit more technical. It's kind of funny how much the RR executive jerks off over the Trent brand of engines. I bet he wouldn't be having such a good time right now.

Interesting report...





Sneaky RR. [no]

That's the problem of having RR maintain the engine's, Qantas have no "corporate knowledge" and cannot therefore make informed decisions.
The Qantas of old (before outsourcing maintenance) had the best "corporate knowledge" in the world, it had a huge wealth of knowledge built up by generations of in house trained engineer's who could do anything the manufacturer's could do, if not better! RR would go to Qantas for consultation on technical issues.

But Mr Joyce and his predecessor only see that cutting the engineering side of the business as easy cost saving's, not realising that in doing so you lose "corporate knowledge" which is worth far more. And for someone who will only be in the job for a couple of years, who cares if years of investment into that knowledge went down the drain. Their bonuses will more than make up for it, right Mr Joyce [rolleyes]

So to blame this on RR is fine, but just remember Mr Joyce that before "accountants" took over Qantas, the engineers would have known about the RR fix and understood which engines did not have the update!

[Apparpsmose]

That's the problem of having RR maintain the engine's, Qantas have no "corporate knowledge" and cannot therefore make informed decisions.
The Qantas of old (before outsourcing maintenance) had the best "corporate knowledge" in the world, it had a huge wealth of knowledge built up by generations of in house trained engineer's who could do anything the manufacturer's could do, if not better! RR would go to Qantas for consultation on technical issues.

But Mr Joyce and his predecessor only see that cutting the engineering side of the business as easy cost saving's, not realising that in doing so you lose "corporate knowledge" which is worth far more. And for someone who will only be in the job for a couple of years, who cares if years of investment into that knowledge went down the drain. Their bonuses will more than make up for it, right Mr Joyce [rolleyes]

So to blame this on RR is fine, but just remember Mr Joyce that before "accountants" took over Qantas, the engineers would have known about the RR fix and understood which engines did not have the update!

I guess if the Qantas engineers were doing engine maintenance they might have known about the issue. Though hard to say, as I think RR were trying to get away with it without anyone knowing. Are there any other airlines that do in house engine maintenance? You can understand Qantas shift to outsourcing if it's the only way they can keep competitive with everyone else.

If you watched the BBC doco harlequin posted on RR engines you can see that the engine maintenance and support package is pretty impressive considering they track each flying aircraft with RR engines and in realtime analyse each engines performance. Though obviously without Qantas engineers to report to things can remain unknown and secret to the airline.

[chuecfafresslds]

Sooo RR are going to fix a mechanical problem with software......

It is supposed to prevent the engine exploding, but not fix the actual problem. To me this means it's not a simple "use this bearing instead" problem, but a redesign problem.

Trouble is it's a rushed software fix (I don't like them at all!), given the rate of engines they've replaced to engines in service, you could end up with more than one engine engines stuck in idle on departure. While low, the chances of ending up with 4 engines stuck at idle is considerably higher now [help]

[etdgxcnc]

Full power, just passed V1 and the engines on one side shut down - I guess you'd find out how strong the undercarraige was under a side loading.

From what I've read, it would seem a fatigue fracture to an oil feed to a centre bearing causes it to fail, the turbine bearing then starts to fail and a possible shaft problem results in a disc breaking up?
If it's internal, may not tbe too much they can do but if it is a fatigue problem, couldn't they use high pressure flexible lines?
Must be a bit more to it than they're currently admitting, I guess.

[mashabox]

if your passed V1 then an engine out is still GO-GO , you do NOT reject after V1 as quite simply , its a total an utter mess than will result in casualities.

once your at `power set` then its hands off the throttles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZw...eature=related

at V1 your at or just at VR .

edit: canberra flight have a report that says its an oil fire that caused the failure

[chuecfafresslds]

if your passed V1 then an engine out is still GO-GO , you do NOT reject after V1 as quite simply , its a total an utter mess than will result in casualities.

once your at `power set` then its hands off the throttles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZw...eature=related

at V1 your at or just at VR .

edit: canberra flight have a report that says its an oil fire that caused the failure

Gordo was talking about both engines on one side being shut down, in that case I don't think the A380 could stay aloft very long with such asymmetrical thrust.

I'm not sure why you are telling me about the oil? Unless it's now officially the reason? It's been the known cause of the fire for a while, what's been unknown is what caused the oil leak. Still no official word, just the speculation Gordo said. This new software patch is supposed to prevent the catastrophic failure from happening by shutting the engine down to idle (good thing).

What triggers the shutdown hasn't been said I don't think, and the rushed manner without proper testing is what worries me. What if it's a vibration sensor or something? If you lose an engine on take off and ask the other 3 for more power, will it shut down each engine in a cascade effect as you keep asking for more power? Can you override the electronic shutdown?

[Optosypoeds]

kind of a ballsy move to put a software fix that will kill power to an engine that will most likely be triggered with a high temp reading in the sump..without knowing for sure that the sump fire that would result in a bearing failure caused the turngine disk to break up...a turbine bearing failure is kind of hard for me to see a disk comming apart, and that is what happened since they have a piece of the turbine disk...they are going to go over that disk and engine with a fine tooth comb and hopefully they find a problem because if it happens again in an aircraft you can say bye bye to RR and what ever carrier chosed to fly these planes with this engine in them...


sure glad they werent GE cause this causes millions in repairs, testing and not to mention the harm this does to a company, the best thing is to find the problem quickly and be 100% sure in their findings...and make it right. its unfortunate but the aircraft maker takes the brunt of the bad press and it really has nothing to do with them...except thier mistake in chosing the wrong engine company

[Optosypoeds]

Gordo was talking about both engines on one side being shut down, in that case I don't think the A380 could stay aloft very long with such asymmetrical thrust.

I'm not sure why you are telling me about the oil? Unless it's now officially the reason? It's been the known cause of the fire for a while, what's been unknown is what caused the oil leak. Still no official word, just the speculation Gordo said. This new software patch is supposed to prevent the catastrophic failure from happening by shutting the engine down to idle (good thing).

What triggers the shutdown hasn't been said I don't think, and the rushed manner without proper testing is what worries me. What if it's a vibration sensor or something? If you lose an engine on take off and ask the other 3 for more power, will it shut down each engine in a cascade effect as you keep asking for more power? Can you override the electronic shutdown?

It will most likely be a high sump temp sensor that will shut down the engine..we have vibration monitors when we run engines but that is on a solid test bed, i dont think you could have one in an aircraft that could be affected by turbulance etc

[chuecfafresslds]

Great to see you in here Jack [thumbup]

edit, oops I missed your post above! Good to hear a qualified opinion. But it doesn't sound good for RR then.

Yeah RR are going to get hammered by Qantas. Sad for RR.

[mashabox]

RR are allready paying Qantas for the RB211 `issues` and not coming up to spec , so likely it`ll be more `paymnets` and business as usual.

[Info-phone]

Looking back at this thread, I was very defensive towards towards the image being given by non-legal channels.

I admit there is serious problems and that I was taking it too lightly.

If I was in there I'd be not sure keeping things dry.

[mashabox]

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...lls-royce.html


stuff on flight from RR

and taken from user `bearfoil` on pprune

I referenced shaft seizure a couple pages back, "lock". The bearing "race" is supplied oil by a pump. The pump is dumb, so the oil needs be regulated by scavenge through vaned galleries (manifold). If the "vane restrictors" (the installed regulators of oil flow) become clogged (coking, carbon), the bearing "box" is pressurized with oil, and the seal fails, supplying oil to "where it shouldn't be" (Joyce). It ignites, causing heat and utter failure of the oil seal. Now the bearing is metal to metal, supplying friction heat to the heat of combustion, and the shaft slows in its fixed mount as its bearings grind to a halt. If the timing of the failures is sufficient, the Shaft locks, the wheel scrubs off its splines, overspeeds, and separates from the engine in pieces whose shape shows not Blade (related) failure, but hub failure, the part of the Wheel that is the strongest, witness the perpendicular fractures of the disc. so thats a good read of the `how` it failed (system by system) - talk is of the scavenger system, being at fault.