- And we can move that throttle to max power.
(engine whines)
(upbeat music)
- Over 50,000 horsepower, that's massive.
- Just be careful, Sam, the leading edges are pretty sharp.
- Test cell, which is a building within a building.
- Wow.
- But we can do water ingestion testing.
(engine whines)
- Well, this is our DreamFix facility.
- What went wrong with the Dreamliner?
- A special Trent 1000 over here.
- Wow, this is a very different one.
- Once it's finished, this will be the world's largest
indoor testbed for experimental testing.
- It's like a swimming pool.
- Yeah, yeah, it's a bit, it isn't actually a swimming pool.
- I'm really impressed, but this is really geared up
for the future generation of engine like the UltraFan.
Welcome to Derby in the U.K.
When you think about Rolls-Royce,
you probably think about their cars,
Rolls-Royce Phantom, Rolls-Royce Ghost.
But for AvGeek like me and many of you, we love aeroplanes ,
we know Rolls-Royce make great aeroplane engine.
Today we're going to take a look inside
the Rolls-Royce engine factory.
(upbeat music)
This building's like, huge.
Looking through what they done, to me,
it's like rocket science.
But here it's just production.
Every 20 days a new engine get produced.
- Welcome, Sam, to our production test facility.
This is where we start to build the engines.
So today we're going to look at engine build for a XWB engine,
which is the exclusive engine on the A350.
(engines hum)
(upbeat music)
Start of the process really, here.
We've got behind us a fan disc.
So this is where the fan blades go.
If you look over behind the fan disc
you can see where the blades come in.
So they're manufactured and brought into here.
So you've got fan blades, fan disc,
and over on the table here the annulus fillers,
and they're the pieces that go between the blades
to make a nice, smooth finish
for the air flowing into the engine.
So this really is the start of the process
for our XWB engine.
Then what we've got here now is we've brought the disc,
the blades and the annulus fillers together
and formed the fan that goes at the front of the engine,
where the flow goes through the engine.
And it's the fan that produces the majority
of the thrust for the engine.
And this is an assembled fan for an XWB engine.
- Wow, look at this blade here.
- Just be careful, Sam, the leading edges are pretty sharp.
- Pretty sharp?
- And that's to get a really efficient flow into the engine.
We've just seen the fan at the front of the engine.
What we're looking at now is a turbine and a shaft
that goes at the back of the engine.
Now, what this is is what drives the fan
with a compressor end, so you tend to see
turbine blades hidden in this casing up here,
and then a long shaft that goes through
the middle of the engine and drives the compressor
or the fan at the front.
So this is another module on build
that comes together to make our XWB engine.
(upbeat music)
What we've got here now is the low-pressure turbine
at the back of the engine.
That's the start of the core build,
so that's why at the back of the engine
we've put that vertically and gradually build that up
in what we call a stack, that's building the core.
And then on the other side of the shop, over here,
we've got the fan being built.
You saw the fan blades being built nextdoor.
This is the fan case, and you can see lots of pipes
and wires on the outside, very complex build process.
And you can see we use electronic models
to direct the guys that are building the engine.
So they'll look on the screen,
look at where the pipes need to go, check that
before they go and actually put them on the engine.
(upbeat music)
So this is where we build the core of the engine.
So what we do there is we start with the compressor
at the bottom, build up to the combustor
and then the turbines on the top.
And as you can see, the different levels,
where the guys that are working on the engine
need to be close to the bit they're working on,
so the floor moves as the engine build progresses.
(upbeat music)
Behind me, the core has finished build now.
She is now ready to marry with the fans.
You remember the fan and the core are built separately?
Here's the final core ready to go,
we just need to join it to the fan.
If you look behind me here, you can see
the core has been flipped to being from vertical
to being horizontal, and the big fan case
has been put on the front.
- [Sam] Phil, what's this machine's been doing,
spinning around? - Okay.
Well, before we put the fan blades in the fan case
we need to make sure that the fan blades
are a perfect fit to the fan case.
We don't want a very big gap between the fan case
and the blades, so this is just checking that
and making sure that they're going to fit perfectly together.
- Behind the 22 giant fan blade is the turbine blade inside.
They can generate, each of 'em, 800 horsepower,
so together, 68 turbine blade generate
over 50,000 horsepower, that's massive.
This looks like the engine's ready to roll.
- Just 20 days from start to finish,
and the engine's ready to go across to test
before it goes to our customer.
So let's go over now and look at our test facility.
- Test facility, so the engine go to test facility now?
- That's right. - Then let's go.
- That's where we go next, let's go.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to 58 Bed control room.
Here is where the guys take control of the engine,
whether it's to gather data or ensure build conformity.
We take the engine, we rig it to the test facility
and we carry out the customer's requirements,
either to test it for maturity, for different strains,
pressures, temperatures, we can do many things
here in Derby in the test bed.
This is basically the pilot takes control
of the engine with the throttle,
and we can move that throttle to max power.
(engine whines)
And that will then put the engine in a certain mode
through the power range.
We gather the data, we write everything we do
electronically and record everything we do.
And we also look at real-time data in the control room
to ensure we are getting the customer's requirements.
So we have a safety system here in the test facility
which allows us to make sure that we have all the people
and the personnel out of the test facility
before we start work and rotating the engine.
So every single system has a lock on.
Until all those locks are in place
we cannot start the engine.
It's an interlock system for safety.
So here we are, entering the the test cell,
which is a building within a building,
which makes the building extremely quiet
when we run the engine.
(upbeat music)
This is the test cell now.
So when we go through this door we'll go into the test cell,
and we'll be able to look at the test facility.
- Wow.
(upbeat music)
- This is where we do different types of testing.
We can do pass-off testing right before
engines go to the customer,
we can do research testing or development testing.
Some of them really exciting and interesting tests
that we don't do very often, that we do in development,
ready for certification, could fan blade-off tests,
where we blow a fan off and check
that it's contained within the system.
We could do a-- - Oh, you have to destroy it?
- Destroy a blade to show-- - How they can sustain that.
- To just prove that should that happen in service,
very unlikely that it would, but we got to prove that
that event is safe, so we do that.
We can do water ingestion testing.
(engine whines)
We pour loads of water down the front of the engine
to simulate a storm and flying through a storm,
and show that the engine performs correctly in that.
We can do bird strike testing, where we fire birds
at the engine to simulate what could happen
if you were to hit a bird and show
that the engine's strong enough to take that.
And we can also do what we call cold-start testing,
where we basically bring a massive fridge in
and put the engine in it.
- Make it really cold. - Overnight,
make it really, really cold, and then take the fridge away
and prove that we can start it cold, 'cause engines
find it more difficult to start in really cold conditions.
So all kinds of really important testing
that we can do on this cell in Derby.
- All right.
- So should we go now and look at the preparation shop
where we get the engines ready
before they go on to the testbed?
Okay, so we're entering our prep shop,
our preparation shop, where the engines come
before they go on the testbed.
Now, every engine that we build here in Derby
will come through here before it gets
delivered to our customer.
So relatively simple setup checks that we do on the testbed,
just to make sure everything's working properly.
Very similar to what you might get with a car.
So anytime we build a car, before they deliver it
to the car showroom they just give it a quick drive,
just to make sure everything's functioning correctly.
We put the white on the front, which simulates,
it's different to what would go on in service,
but it simulates the front of the engine.
We connect it up to this sort of carriage at the top
which simulates the pylon,
the bit that attaches the engine to the aircraft.
It's not exactly the same, but it represents it.
And then you can lots and lots and lots of connections.
So the data then comes from the engine into the pylon,
the pylon connects together in the test cell,
and all that data flows back to those computers
that we saw in the control rooms,
so the engineers and the test engineers
can understand how the engine's performing.
(upbeat music)
- So Sam, this is our DreamFix facility
which is a physical representation, if you like,
of the effort we're putting into fix this problem
we've got with the Trent 1000,
and reduce the disruption for our customers
which we are really regretful of.
At the moment we've got about four engines in here
which we're fixing quickly on a turn time
to get them back out into the fleet.
And you see around you, about the activity in here
to really start to get onto this problem and crack it,
embody all the fixes that we know we've got designs for now.
(upbeat music)
- The Trent 1000 engine is developed specially
for 787 Dreamliners, but somehow they suffer a problem.
What went wrong with the Dreamliner
on the Trent 1000 engine, Richard?
- Well, we had three issues, but I think the easiest way
to try and understand it is use a car analogy.
Imagine you've got a car, it's been proven safe for use,
but you know that the tyres will wear out at some point,
you know that the windscreen wipers'll
wear out at some point.
Those things happen, and you bring those in
to fix them as and when they need.
Two of our problems were like that.
So we had an HP turbine and IP turbine
that were wearing out slightly earlier than expected,
so you bring them in to replace them earlier than expected.
On top of that, and the third problem which made it
a bit trickier was we had an IP compressor problem,
which was not something that you can monitor on condition.
So it's not like wearing your tyres out
or looking at your windscreen wipers.
Imagine you had a problem with an oil pump
that you had to bring in.
If you bring that car in because the tyres
you know have worn out, you don't necessarily
replace the wiper blades and the oil pump at the same time.
That's why it's take a while for us
to flow all of these fixes in,
just because you don't necessarily fix everything at once.
The engine's perfectly safe and perfectly reliable,
it's just that we're not making it last as long
as we and our customers would like it to.
So that's the three problems we're addressing.
So imagine you're bringing in your tyres,
we're putting new tyres on, not necessarily
changing the windscreen wipers at the same time
because they might still be good to go.
Then you come in next time,
you change the windscreen wipers, your tyres are still fine.
That's why it takes a long time,
but we'll get there and we'll fix this problem.
It's all ready, the design fixes are already in place.
So Sam, we're in the DreamFix facility
looking at Trent 1000s, and we've actually got
a special Trent 1000 over here
that's got some of our newer technology
for future engines on, which I could like to show you
if you want to walk this way.
- Let's take a look.
(upbeat music)
Wow, this is a very different one.
This one has blue turquoise colour engine blade.
It looks like carbon rim here, yeah.
So what's the latest technology breakthrough at Rolls-Royce?
- So this is actually a test engine
for our latest carbon/titanium fan and containment system,
which is the application of carbon technology
to reduce the weight of the front of the engine,
the fan and the fan case.
It's running on a Trent 1000 donor engine,
'cause it happens to be the right size,
but we're putting this engine and the new system
through its paces.
This technology, it's taken a while for us
to surpass our own class-leading titanium blades.
And that's fundamentally because first and second generation
carbon blades, while they were good for weight,
they weren't as good for air dynamics,
whereas our titanium blades that we saw in the Trent 1000,
they're excellent for both.
Now we've got a technology where,
because of the 3D weave of the carbon fibre,
we can make a blade that is both lightweight
and aerodynamically efficient.
So a system like this at this size
would save about 750 pounds per engine,
which is about, obviously on a twin-engined aircraft,
1,500 pounds of weight that you can really,
either burn less fuel or take more passengers.
'Cause what we'll also do during certification testing
is we'll put an explosive bolt into the root here
and explode that when the engine's at full power,
and then the engine has to prove it can contain
the kinetic energy of that blade.
If one of these were to let go under those circumstances,
the amount of energy that we're talking about containing
would be similar to if you take a BMW 3 Series
and drive off a 100-foot cliff.
That's the amount of energy that this has to contain.
And what we've got to prove as the engine manufacturer
is that, the engine doesn't necessarily
have to continue running and producing thrust,
but it does have to make sure that it runs down safely
and no high-energy debris penetrates the casing
to go and harm the fuselage.
So if one of these were to happen while you are flying,
then you might spill your gin and tonic
but you'd be perfectly safe.
(upbeat music)
- So today we're changing up to construction gear,
because today we're going to see something
under the construction.
- We're here today at Bed 80.
So once it's finished, this will be the world's largest
indoor testbed for experimental testings.
This is where we actually push our engines
to their ultimate limits so we can understand
how they really perform.
So what we're doing now is really putting
the intelligence into the building.
We're fitting out the systems which will allow us
to control the engine, but more importantly
understand what the engine's doing.
And we can actually read up to 10,000 parameters
on this bed, and we can take that data real-time
and we can actually stream it back out to the cloud
so that it can actually link real time
to all our various models.
So really exciting for us,
it's not just a construction project, you know?
This is about testing for the future for Rolls-Royce.
We're now inside what we call the prep shop.
So this is where we bring what essentially is
a built experimental engine,
but we're now bringing it in here to get it ready for tests.
So this is where we put the engine on our pylon,
so effectively we've made the engine think
it's fitted to an aircraft.
So that the reason for the size of this building,
is to allow us to actually manoeuvre the engines
and get them ready, and with UltraFan,
clearly one of the largest engines we've done,
particularly in terms of its fan size.
- That's huge.
Yesterday I was in Testbed 58, I was really impressed.
But this is really geared up for the future
generation of engine like the UltraFan.
Much, much bigger and much, much stronger capability.
- That's correct, this is a lot bigger.
But again, bigger for a reason.
The UltraFan, the fan size is significantly larger.
We will be putting a lot more slow-moving air
through this testbed.
So again, this is all about getting a smooth flow of air
into that engine, and we can do big.
Absolutely, we can do UltraFan,
and clearly we've designed it to do a little bit more.
But the important thing is we can also do small
in this bed, as well, so we can also go down
to much smaller engines.
It will basically be able to do every engine we make today,
and every engine we're intending to make in the future
at this point in time.
- It's like a swimming pool. - Yeah, yeah.
It's a bit, it isn't actually a swimming pool.
So what this is about,
this is about we have a floor in here,
and when we're testing, the floor's down flat.
But when we want to get to the engine,
because it's raised to such a height,
what this allows us to do is we lift the entire floor up
to the engine, and this allows us to work on the engine
while it's in the testbed,
and then we lower it back down again.
But yeah, absolutely, you can imagine
people do come in thinking it's our pool.
But yeah, no, it's a floor which comes up and down.
(upbeat music)
We've moved from the test cell.
We're now into the first section of the tube,
which is where we start to manage the air
coming out of the engine.
Anyone who's been at the airport,
you know what the noise is like.
And I think lots of people probably have seen the videos
on YouTube of the people standing at the airport fences
and seeing the power of the engine as it takes off.
(engines roar)
Clearly, we need to make sure that we do something
about all that power, and that's what this is doing.
So this is about a five-and-a-half-meter section tube,
which has actually been designed to allow us to slow
that air down as it comes out the back of the engine.
Again, so by the time it actually leaves the test cell,
people won't even realise the engine's running.
This is effectively where the air will leave the testbed.
When we look at this we call it the basket
for obvious reasons.
So this is where the air, it's come out of the engine,
it's come through the big tube we've seen,
it comes into here which is an eight-meter section.
And what we're doing here is as the air is coming down
it's hitting that, what does look like
the front of an engine, it's hitting that cone.
But what that cone's then doing is spreading the air out
throughout this space, and again the idea is
we spread the air out, we change its direction,
we slow it down, and the air can then all lift up.
This testbed you know, build a testbed like this
probably every 10 to 15 years,
so from an engineer's point of view this really is
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
So we've got people working on this
who are very, very excited, 'cause they know
they're doing something for the future,
future generations, and they know they may not get
the opportunity again in their career, so really exciting.
- Then your legacy would last for a lifetime.
- That's it, absolutely. - Many more years to come,
for such an engineering feat like this.
- Yeah, absolutely.
(air whooshing)
(bell dings)
(bubble pops)