You mean like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca4PgyBJAzM

Material science tech here.

I would bet you lots of money that this is due to material failure. Most likely manufacturing issue, like the Sioux event.

Pictures tells me the fracture edges are sharp and clean which suggests rapid phase change in the material, to the point of breaking.

The initiating event might have been a smaller fracture in f.ex. a fan blade (or what else floats your boat) and the accompanying force redistribution was enough that the flawed crystal structures said bye bye and left the building with the entire front attached.

The resemblance to footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (also near Seattle!) is uncanny.

OAP

Thank you for your interesting and courteous correction of my comment about airloads and speeds. Why I sat where I did and you sat where you did LoL. Me being wrong about the loading and the diversion field.

All the same not a scenario many people are ever going to face

True, the failure rates are extremely low. Modern aircraft and engines are designed to very high standards. :D

Isn't this the second incident on the A380 where there was an engine blow out? Qantas flight 32. Can't be due to a specific engine supplier as the former uses GP7000 and the latter uses the Trent 900. Could this be a fault in engine design or just poor maintenance?

@foxdeux pls read up on what exactly happened

on AF66 the FAN including the fandisk detached from the shaft and departed the aircraft
on QF32 the TURBINE disk FRACTURED

and the engines are very different not just a different supplier. so it can be a fault in engine design but it can't be the same one because a fracturing oil tube (what happened on QF32) would not make the fan depart the aircraft.

btw the QF32 manufacturing fault grounded a significant part of the A380 fleet and was rectified.
did you even read this thread? :/

I don't think a fan blade failure would cause this. I also don't think a fan disk failure would cause it either as the fan disk is too far forward of the separation point. More likely is the failure emanated right at the point of separation of the fan module. Located at or very close to that that separation point is a shaft coupling (fan to LPT shaft) and a bearing structure. I think the conical fractured piece in the Ave Herald photo is part of the bearing support or seal system. More likely, there was a bearing problem that caused the shaft to fracture at that point. See the engine cross-section below:

https://www.tumblr.com/search/gp7200

Also, I don't think the remaining portion of the engine was about to fall off. The engine to pylon mounting system and attachment points are well engineered as are the pylon to wing mounting and attachment points. Think about something, during a turbulent air event, the plane could drop 500 feet or more and abruptly bottom out, the full weight of the engine (14,000 lbs + the weight of the nacelle) pulling against the pylon and pylon to wing. Vertical, side and rotational load factors are taken into account during the design processes with significant safety margins applied. Everything survives thanks to the robust designs employed...

I guess this is one case where we can accurately say 'The front fell off'.;)

There's 8 pages of comments, I don't have time to sift through all of them. But thank you for taking the time to explain to me the different causes of the AF and QF flights. I just thought they were somewhat similar because engines 'breaking apart' like that is a very rare occurrence in commercial aviation and AF and QF are by no means budget airlines so if it's a maintenance issue I would be concerned with the airlines. So by deductive reasoning I assumed it would most likely be caused by a flaw in design, I'm not an aviation technical expert, just an enthusiast.

Peter Garrison wrote the definitive article on flutter a few years ago for Air&Space magazine, beginning with the L-188 and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
https://www.airspacemag.com/military...r-1873980/?all

Agree.

Without specific knowledge or a GP7000 IPC to view we are guessing at best.

Engine Alliance Service: 24/7 Parts & Support for GP7200
Not quite the advantage advertised.

Not much money to bet but do see a grounding coming.
......

...meanwhile - confusion reigns getting the ducks in order...

Agencies dither over who leads A380 engine explosion probe | Reuters

I had a look at a GP7200 cutaway. Interestingly it seems the first 5 or 6 compressor stages turn with the fan.

The failure seems to be where the fan attaches to its end of the LP shaft.

Let's just be grateful that the fan didn't contact the airframe after departing the engine.

Not sure if anyone has already made this point but given AF066's route right up the middle of the UK it's a relief this didn't happen earlier in the flight, with large chunks of metal potentially falling into populated areas

That's common design practice for both Pratt and GE. GE refers to the compressor stages on the LP shaft as the "booster" or "booster stages", Pratt simply calls that the LP Compressor.
The only big turbofan engines I'm familiar with that don't have that feature are the three spool Rolls engines.

Though on the other hand, if it had departed over anywhere in the UK, it would almost certainly have been recovered by now.

If the enquiry hasn't officially started, nobody will be searching for the missing pieces.

Actually, from a better cutaway view of the GP7200 engine, the partial conical fractured piece in the photo appears to be part of the fan short shaft that stayed with the engine when it fractured...

number0009,
Here you go, thanks to pax2908! You can enlarge it, just click on the art work.
http://www.pw.utc.com/Content/GP7200...taway_high.jpg