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I helped install a data acquisition system for the Trent test bed at Derby years ago, so watched the BBC2 programme last night about RR Trent 1000 as fitted to A380 and Dreamliners
Thought the madness tech thing was that the Trent 1000 Fan blades are hollow titanium and they make them hollow by inflating the blade stock like a balloon! (but obs much more tech)
and single metal crystal turbine blades..
I work with R-R and another company that package Trent's, RB211's and 501's into power generation sets. The Trent's are stored in humidity controlled 'bubbles' and transported on shock-isolation trolleys..... the 501's get bumped around on a pallet with an oily rag stuffed in each end for 'protection' 😉
My father was an RR engineer, worked on the RB211 and the Trent projects, we spent a few years in Montreal whilst he worked on the Trent power generation stuff....fondly remember bits of turbine blades around the house, still amazed at how light some of thes large peices of metal were.
More fond memories of going to the trent test bed opening with my dad when we lived in Derby.
Still have a mini cut away metal model of a RB211 at home!
wasn't the RB211 the tristar engine and first of the Trents?
I just thought the hollow formed Trent 1000 fan blades where amazing in terms or manufacturing terms
wasn't the RB211 the tristar engine and first of the Trents?
Yup. The same engine that bankrupted & nationalised the company also laid the foundations for turning the company into the global PLC it is today.
And for a bonus point does anyone know what the "B" in RB-211 stands for?
(No Wikipedia....)
Barnoldswick??
Bentley?
Big
It's ReallyBIg-211
Baby? Rolls Baby 211?
LOL @ Drac.
Domwells wins a point, its Rolls-Barnoldswick
I've had a tour around the Tech facility today and also had a very nice buffet. On
my way back to Newport now on a very small train.
The 900 and 1000 looked pretty fascinating, would have been nice to see the big one.
The madness tech thing is that they originally tied to make fan blades out of carbon fibre for the rb211 This led to basically the uk selling off commercial interests carbon fibre development another uk developed thingamabob and so forth and so forth
Strangely I did defence work on the F35 at hucknall google blisk completely foreign concept to me when you used to blowing blades(inflating) up,beautiful when done right but a right PITA also
Imagine the horror of knowing the blades were carbon.....haters would never fly
One of the guys I sometimes ride with is a RR tester - claims he's the guy who throws the fozen chickens at them to simulate the bird strikes....
After seeing the F35 blisk in the flesh it is a marvel of engineering. As are some of the more experimental RR technologies
What a waste of good food though, all those chickens. 🙁
I work for RR.
Used to work for Rolls Royce defence in Bristol...got a nice turbine blade from a Pegasus Engine (Harrier) as a key ring now. 🙂 Kind of wish I was still involved.
Joined RR from school as an apprentice in 1989, first a welder in Hucknall, then ended up as a Project Manager in Derby. Still miss the place, the people, and mostly the smell of burning Avtur from the test beds 🙂
Rob
Imagine the horror of knowing the blades were carbon.....haters would never fly
Neither would I knowing ice would cause them to delaminate or a bird strike would be a catastrophic failure.
I worked in Bristol so only saw the smaller military engines.
general electric fan blades are already carbon fibre. yikes
What was the program called?
P20 download as Torrent:
http://torrentz.eu/258bf5446fe20818a0ef140934141bba6f47b938
Cheers 😀
Worked with RR a few years ago when I worked for QinetiQ, it has the potential to be a very good company.
general electric fan blades are already carbon fibre. yikes
Yeah but this was back in the 60s nothing like the technology we have now....
I worked in Bristol so only saw the smaller military engines.
If I recall I'm sure when they failed with making the carbon blades and it bankrupt Rolls the technology was utilized inside bristol composites a Rolls subsidiary and was later sold off cant remember if I read that
ironically the next generation of bike stuff you see will probably be using the same 3d braid technologies used in the next generation rolls turbine blades.................go full circle or what
I might be mistaken but aren't the carbon blades being made in Crosspointe?
I dunno It was 3 years ago that I was at hucknall maybe longer I'm trying to think which F1 car I went to work on after blisks but I think at the time crosspointe was being built for f136 blisk manufacturing.
I only recall the 3d braids because I was working with 3d braids on bike stuff
I installed the ventilation ductwork for the Trent testbed, also for the canteen and bogs but that doesn't sound as glamourous
My brother has just been offered a job at RR, in Derby. What's the traffic like heading up the A38 in the mornings...?
And I thought the Ti blade thing was great, but here at the cutting edge of pneumatics we're used to it.
[i]er
I dunno It was 3 years ago that I was at hucknall maybe longer I'm trying to think which F1 car I went to work on after blisks but I think at the time crosspointe was being built for f136 blisk manufacturing.[/i]
There were two Crosspointe facilities planned, one for blisks, and the other for conventional discs, I think. Now that the F136 has been canned, the Blisks won't be going there.
Rolls Royce. My least favourite customer since, ooh about the day I started working in the aerospace industry in 1996! 😉
My mind boggles at those big jet engines! I work around Garrett TPE331s which are comparatively tiny turbines for single-seaters and the amount of parts and maintenance costs on those is obscene! Very cool though 🙂
What Is the output of the Trent 1000 measured in MW? I remember working at John brown engineering when they built General Electric turbines. The inlet plenum of a 200 Mw turbine was an eery place to be when it was being cranked ahead of a test run.
a38 - fine til about half 7
I've built two factOries that were going to be used by rr suppliers. One was for a company doing the "lost wax process", that in itself is a pretty cool way of making stuff!!
You built a factory by lost wax.... now that is extraordinary 🙂
RR fan blades are made in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, the same town as.....
Hope Technology!
That'll be because the guys that started Hope are ex RR guys!
Always makes me smile that their exploded diagrams still follow a lot of RR drawing convention. Another (probably quite sad) reason I like Hope kit, feels like I'm supporting old colleagues.
Bit early in the day to get sentimental!
Rob
A good mate of mine works for Howmet who manufacture the single crystal compressor blades for Trent engines. I have a couple of test ones he gave me ready to mount on a plinth. The most amazing bit is the cooling holes through the middle to stop them melting as they operate above the melting point of the alloy! Can't remember the exact figures but each blade which is about 5" long costs around £15k!
Just to be pedantic, and so you can demonstrate an increased level of 'anorak-ness' when people admire your mounted blades, if they've got cooling holes they'll be turbine blades rather than compressor blades.
Compressor blades are forward of the combustor so are in a cooler operating environment. Turbine blades extract energy from the exhaust gas path, so as you quite rightly say, operate in temperatures above the melting point of the material they are made from.
Rob
The depth and breadth of knowledge on this forum never ceases to amaze me!
^^ agree. this thread makes me feel a bit simple
Just imagine what would happen if we all got together to create a bike brand!
Joined RR from school as an apprentice in 1989, first a welder in Hucknall, then ended up as a Project Manager in Derby. Still miss the place, the people, and mostly the smell of burning Avtur from the test beds
I live across the road from RR Hucknall & now they've stopped using the test beds there, I can actually get to sleep after nights. Testing a jet engine to destruction is not that helpful when you need sleep! Mind you, the impromptu air show by the Battle of Britain memorial flight, when they come for maintenance work, is always fun.
Compressor blades are forward of the combustor so are in a cooler operating environment. Turbine blades extract energy from the exhaust gas path, so as you quite rightly say, operate in temperatures above the melting point of the material they are made from.
yep holes in the turbine blade... made little things - they have a tough life!
shame this happened...on the 900s..
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but good to see the 1000 on the dreamliner
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RR Aero is a proper world leader.
It's a very interesting piece. Forty years ago, Rolls Royce was a niche player. Now they own Allison and account for a huge amount of the worldwide commercial market. Truly astonishing, but lets not forget that the merger between RR and Bristol has had a lot to do with the company's success.
Yes, quite right - they are turbine blades!
Here is his demo case which shows the 4 stages of single crystal turbine blade production from the ceramic moulds for the cooling holes on the right, to the wax mould for the blade itself which is then 'feather and tarred' with ceramic before the wax is melted away to leave a mould for the molten metal to be poured into and some clever crystal jiggery pokery takes place. It's then dipped in hot acid to melt the ceramic and leave the raw blade behind and finally machined.
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rootes1 - is that the quantas plane engine that crapped itself a few months ago? It got so much press over here as does any slight issue w a quantas flight.
Interested in this thread, as my father in law was a machinist at RR in Filton, he is 74 and only retired last year, he has been there since he was 16!! They dont want to get rid of him as the younger ones dont have the skills on the tools.
rootes1 - is that the quantas plane engine that crapped itself a few months ago? It got so much press over here as does any slight issue w a quantas flight.
Yep - the red bit on the cowl is the remains of the Qantas logo.
Interested in this thread, as my father in law was a machinist at RR in Filton, he is 74 and only retired last year, he has been there since he was 16!! They dont want to get rid of him as the younger ones dont have the skills on the tools.
Probably true, though RR has a good apprentice scheme.
Si
Just remembered, I installed the ventilation for Metal Improvement Company at Earby (near Barnoldswick) where they laser peen the fan blades of the Trent engine to remove the stresses created in the casting process
rootes1 - is that the quantas plane engine that crapped itself a few months ago? It got so much press over here as does any slight issue w a quantas flight.Interested in this thread, as my father in law was a machinist at RR in Filton, he is 74 and only retired last year, he has been there since he was 16!! They dont want to get rid of him
I can believe this when there were guys on machines that had spent more time with the machine than their own wife they knew when it was warm cold ,how much wear to adjust for ,simply amazing and when they are gone that knowledge and history goes with em,
1st thing that springs to mind reading this thread is, 1st time I ever flew was only from Newcastle to Alicante. On going up the steps to board the aircraft I looked at the engine on the wing & saw the RR logo. This alleviated any apprehension I may have had about the flight.
2nd was on a flight from Schiphol to Minneapolis on a KLM 747, the aircraft was named, 'Sir Frank Whittle'. That made me smile.
The knowledge and sheer geekiness on here cracks me up! I love it! It helps offset the daily threads of "my gears slip", "tell me about 29ers" and "show me your on-one" 😀
Yebbut.... how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?
I worked for RR between 96 and 02, in several different areas over civil, military, power generation and naval, Derby Sinfin (PCF, Morelane, & Rainsway, Hucknall, Bristol, etc. It truely shaped the worker I am today, and funded/aided my degree.
A fantastic company but and I love the product, but the PLC environment can be tough on workers sometimes.
A truly brilliant thread - thanks guys. Much better than the dreary "My car is faster than yours" ones. Any more turbine (or compressor)-based gems to share?
We use two RB-211 cores in the navy's Type 45 destroyers. We use them in WR21 engines with alternators on the end to make 21MW each. Rather than just suck-squeeze-bang-blow we've got an intercooler to cool the compressed air and a recuperator (exhaust heat exchanger) to recycle some waste heat.
If you haven't already seen this, you'll certainly enjoy it:
[url= http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/ ]Jet powered VW Beetle[/url]
Mintman, I worked in the special procurement team to bring the parts in for the first WR21 engines, it was in a mess and we had about a year to sort it out, back in 2001, small world eh.
We use two RB-211 cores in the navy's Type 45 destroyers. We use them in WR21 engines with alternators on the end to make 21MW each. Rather than just suck-squeeze-bang-blow we've got an intercooler to cool the compressed air and a recuperator (exhaust heat exchanger) to recycle some waste heat.
If they'd only waited a bit they could have had the new 44MW 'RB-211' IGT for some real poke (actually a cut down Trent, but it seems the power generation market is happier buying into the RB-211 name rather than the new fangled Trent). Working on the first RB211-H63 onshore powergen sets as I type this.....
Here is his demo case which shows the 4 stages of single crystal turbine blade production from the ceramic moulds for the cooling holes on the right, to the wax mould for the blade itself which is then 'feather and tarred' with ceramic before the wax is melted away to leave a mould for the molten metal to be poured into and some clever crystal jiggery pokery takes place. It's then dipped in hot acid to melt the ceramic and leave the raw blade behind and finally machined.
There is a cut-away of a Pegasus engine in the new M-Shed museum in Bristol with some video/commentatory of the process. Not a patch on the old industrial musem with room-fulls of giant radial engines and an a cut-away/'real life exploded view' Olympus that you could walk around.
Yebbut.... how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?
I wouldnt expect an spf/db frame anytime soon,Though Orange did look at it for aluminium many many many moons ago.
Yebbut.... how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?
No aerospace would mean no tubes for Ti bikes.
Specialized old metal matrix (m series from 90's) came from aerospace tech
+ general materials technology..
+ no Hope Technology!
Watched the programme last night - fantastic show case for British Engineering - the man hours that go in to each part are just incredible - so removed from the car industry where it's all machine welded and semi-automated assembly.
Yebbut.... how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?
No idea what you're talking about..... 😉
On seeing an RB-199 run up to reheat on a test bed for the first time:
Me:"What are the lines painted on the walls for?"
Controller:"That's where the blades will come through if it fails"
Me: *Shuffles to the right by a little bit*
A truly brilliant thread - thanks guys. Much better than the dreary "My car is faster than yours" ones. Any more turbine (or compressor)-based gems to share?
They are the biggest filer of patents in the UK, oh and I get to handle all the gas turbine related stuff. Stuff that won't be on engines for another 10-5 years.