PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Qantas A380 uncontained #2 engine failure
Old 16th Nov 2010, 23:55
  #1057 (permalink)  
edmundronald
 
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The maths seems interesting

Only an SLF so don't really know what I'm talking about, but since this whole incident came about with the initial failure of just one engine, wouldn't 4 engine planes in theory have twice the risk of this occuring than a twin?!
The maths seem incontrovertible

On the other hand, I'd guess there are a lot of silent motor outages that just remove an engine's thrust without any damage to anything outside the engine. In those cases a 4-engine plane ends up with 3/4 of its engines running, 3/4 of max thrust etc.

So, assuming that uncontained failures are very rare compared to silent failures, 4 engine planes have an advantage; if they are not so rare, then maybe 2-engine planes have an advantage -

Edmund
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