Originally Posted by Old Engineer
. . . spline wear . . . canary . . .
Our two gas turbine experts have explained to us that the pressures in the various chambers are such that the forces on the shafts tend to cancel and there is very little nett load on the bearings.
I wonder whether the problem in the Trent 972 might perhaps be deviation from the design pressures at high power, creating a force imbalance and leading to greater loads on the bearings and the bearing support structures? This in turn would lead to relative movement of the modules, with consequent spline wear and oil pipe fractures. Inspection of the splines would indicate the extent of any movement.