HOW TO BUILD A JUMBO JET ENGINE
 

This is a thread from one of the "backroom boys and girls without whom nothing would leave the ground" (retired).

I've just finished watching the BBC2 documentary "How to build a Jumbo Jet Engine" episode 2 of 3 which was broadcast on Sunday (4 Dec 2011) evening.

It was focused on the design and build of the Trent series of Rolls Royce turbofan engines. I wish I had watched episode 1.

It was a really, really good programme which showed off the best of British engineering and the enormous attention to detail which the "backroom boys and girls" exercise every day to make flying probably the safest mode of transport in today's world.

I will certainly watch episode 3 of 3 next Sunday and I recommend it to you all.

Best wishes SOS

I'll second that. I think I have always been able to admire skill in people even if their work doesn't interest me (not the case here). The attention to detail is fantastic. I hope RR and Derby have a long future ahead. Top amazing bit for me: finding a way to make the fan blades hollow!

CG

Spot on CG. The inflation technique was amazing.

SOS

The British, or a British company had a lot to do with being able to commercially produce Titanium and Titanium alloys that are used in Aircraft engines the world over.

One wonders how much technically further ahead we would have been if Bristol Siddeley had taken over Rolls Royce rather than the other way round.
The technical challenges of Pegasus and Olympus were both Bristol products, as were so many others.
I've had several ex-Bristol staff tell me that if their engineers had been given a look-in, the RB211 would never have been such a monumental f'up in its early days

Hi SOSL,

thanks for posting this, what a great series!

I found it on Youtube...you can watch all of the episodes anytime you want!

Here's the link....



cheers,

-John:ok:

Looked for next week, cannot see it, what time is it on?

If you ever get a chance to take the RR Derby tour, grab it!
The chap who showed us round had started working on jets in 1943, and had a fine mix of entertaining and interesting stories (and I say that as a pilot).

I really enjoyed this, and the one on 'how to build a super-jumbo wing' about the A380 wings. Was astonished at how hand-crafted the engines are, and at the hollow fan blades.

Found the instructions a bit disjointed. But willing to give it a try. Now where can I get some titanium ingots?

Titanium ingots ?

The RAF are scrapping plenty of planes, rip some of the Titanium out of the engines. Or go to IMI who originally commercialised it.

.

500N, thanks for the tip. I'm following the series and building my own in my shed as we go along. Couldn't get the titanium so am using old baked bean and beer cans instead. Looking pretty good so far. Couple of questions:

What do I run it on?

Is the temerature it runs at REALLY that important?

If I need more thrust, just make it go faster, right?

How could they know that? The RB211 was revolutionary (no pun intended). They couldn't possibly have experience of it, no-one had made such an engine before. They may have had experience of developing new engines. So had the RR engineers. If it comes down to a pissing competition "we've got more experience than you of making new engines"-"oh no you haven't", then that's not very useful.

@ Roadster 280
 

Seems you don't know about the Olympus (Concorde, if you really don't know about what Bristol did ...) and the rest (Pegasus etc).
I'm sure they'd never have gone along the "Super-duper, frightfully hi-tech carbon fibre" route for one thing (Rolls have had a history of hi-tech (!!!), but have also had problems with compressors, from the Avon (had to go secretly to Armstrong Siddeley - later part of Bristol) up to the RR mods to the Bristol design with the Japanese for the predeccessor to the V2500.
RR's own PR goes to their heads at times (remember the slogan "Best car in the World" for a beast with leaf spring suspension and other 1930's features - but beautifully built - and that was before "engines" and "automobiles" became separate).
Having failed with the CFRP fan (which was supposed to compensate for the extra weight of the 3-shaft layout) RR then spent oodles of dosh on the hollow titanium blade fabrication to get back some weight. As in the automibile company which also spent a lot to design seals for the "bought-in" GM automatic transmission, becasue "Rolls Royce gearboxes do not ever leak" or special hand-sewn leather gaiters for inter-leaf lubrication of cart springs, forgetting that coil springs don't need greasing ...
I think things have changed since 1971, but they really did drive themselves bankrupt.
And it was said they snatched bristol's in a dawn raid because Bristol was getting too close to SNECMA, with its links to GE, those links going back well pre-WW2 to SNECMA (or a predecessor) building Hercules piston aero engines (remember them, with sleeve-valves, ?
Yers, there's the "Magic of a name" thing, but the silver plating has flaked from time to time, even fairly recently ...

Most illuminating, Jig Peter.

However my beef was the assertion that Bristol would never have F'ed up the RB211 in the way that Rolls did. My contention is that the Bristol engineers could never have known whether they would or wouldn't have done a better job, because they didn't do the RB211.

I'm neither sticking up for, nor denigrating either company. Just pointing out that saying they'd have done a better job is a tad hollow, because they didn't.

lets just say that the general impression given was that RR was generally way behind Bristol in terms of engineering technology.
The old chaps I knew - now all departed - used to revel in stories of how they'd had to get RR out of the mess time and time again.
One example I can remember was a much repeated assertion that RR were incapable of engineering reliable air-bearings until they acquired the Bristol manufacturing methods