Radken
I would like to thank all of you who have taken the time to share with the uninitiated so much of your knowledge and experience about things turbine.
While most engineering talk is way over my head, much of my “between the lines” understandings of what you engineers are saying has imparted to me a very real sense that all may not be as well as we thought in the engine design, engineering and testing business. Ahh, but for human foibles the world, though, would not be quite as interesting. It’s quite a shame to actually learn that the reality of “bean counter impingement” has not been somehow (novelly) been formally brought into the calculus of flow modeling and the totality of turbine engineering. LOL
From my A&P point of view (long sentence to follow), if it is true the T972 (1000?) is a tad light, a tad flexy, a tad shaky, or a tad too refined, and therefor, a little “edgy,” and maybe a little under-tested as a novelly “experimental” engine, then RR it seems may have overstepped in the competition to get to the top or stay on the top. In the process they apparently may have taken advantage of “we the public” in a truly callous way.
The general conclusion in this thread, to the effect the uncontained failure just simply should not have happened (for the reasons so far given), seems quite correct to me. And, it begs the question as to the processes and compromises that were forced on the engineers by the “beaners.” Just how the competitors in the ultra high-tech a/c turbine business can enter and reenter time and again the chariot race competition for every engine size and spec demand that comes down the pike, while simultaneously being forced to develop, adopt, and/or almost insanely embrace the cheapest, lightest, engineered to the “max” solutions for everything, is mind blowing. Oh, it’s business as usual! I get that. But It’s the uniqueness of the airborne product that exposes the large “red zone” of error tolerance peculiar to devices which hurtle through the air.
Last year we watched, fascinated, as a lovely cruise to Mexico on a new, high tech $200 m, 150,000 gtw ship (designed to the latest marine standards).... suddenly turned disastrous as a “contained” oil fire, suddenly, “surprisingly” took out all the big Warsala diesels driving the propulsion gens. Oh, fire took out all the back-up gens as well, likely because the control room was involved. Truth be known, it apparently came close to sending 5000 people swimming. But for just a little bit of good fortune they could have easily been a thousand miles from land, lights out, with no steerage, and broaching in 50 foot seas.
However, as we know, it’s still quite another thing to be cruising on a new high-tech $300 m airplane which itself suffers “surprising” propulsion and control problems rooted, truth be known, in engineering compromises..... but, also, by fate smiling favorably upon them, were fortunate for the RTB option they had. Had they been another hour or two gone it’s possible the outcome would have been far different.
Here comes a new point, possibly addressed previously, but I’ve not read such...
it seems to me not much has been made of the fact the 380’s No. 1 could not be shut down OG from the cockpit. I haven’t gleaned from any discussions that the crew thought #1 had been fodded, and I can’t recall if it went into “degraded” mode either after the #2 blowout. I don’t recall reading they attempted to shut it down in flight. In fact, it seems #1 must have been following throttle as commanded. Who’d want to shut down an operating engine unless ???
But from what we learned about their ground problem, we did witness failure of the manual #1 fuel shut-off. The eng ran OG for, what, five hours? The console fuel cut-off instructs the FADEC to s/o both the engine MEC and, simultaneously, the main fuel feed s/o valve in the upper wing/pylon area? Is that correct? If this is the way it is, to me it means they’d rubbed up pretty tight against “lady luck” out there at altitude. They were very, very fortunate that the #1 shut-off process wasn’t called for by reason of fire. On top of this, also, no mechs apparently were OG in Singapore either who were qualified on this new engine, at least to the point of thinking they could open it up the case and shut it down mechanically. I’ve seen it done on a CF6 at the gate with a similar problem, but many knew that engine.
Do any of you know if the T972 FADEC parameters “sense” eng/nacelle/pylon fire indication, and, if warranted, autonomously shut off main fuel at the wing, while also commanding MEC fuel off to the manifolds? Would that be part of the new automated flight deck as part of the “work load reduction” automation push?