London South East reports on the aftermath of Qantas grounding its A 380 fleet and Singapore Airlines delaying all A 380 flights for extra checks of the their Trent 900 engines:
Shares in Rolls-Royce fall 3.2 percent after Qantas Airways suspends flights of its Airbus A380 fleet after the failure of a Rolls Trent 900 engines triggers an emergency landing in Singapore.
Shares in Airbus parent EADS were 3.7 percent down after what is one of the most serious incidents for the world’s largest passenger plane in three years of commercial flight.
‘If it is a design fault on the engines it would be embarrassing because Rolls is the number two engine manufacturer in the world and has a fantastic reputation,’ says BGC Partners senior strategist Howard Wheeldon.
‘These type of things take a fairly lengthy time to investigate,’ he said, adding that ‘it will be costly to address those issues’ if it is a serious fault with the engine.
The intense competition between the two engines for the A 380, the Trent 900 and its rival the GP7200 manufactured by the General Electric/Pratt & Whitney Engine Alliance is centred around fuel efficiency. The GP7200 is generally thought to have a 1% advantage. It also seems to be the strategy for the U.S. engine makers to constantly maintain this performance gap over their competitor as each tries to improve performance.
Of course Rolls-Royce disputes the existence of that fuel-burn performance lead and says its improvement plan for the Trent 900EP (enhanced performance) will lead to more substantial efficiency modifications by around 2013. Still in the early stages, these plans will incorporate advanced technology from the most recent iterations of the Boeing 787’s Trent 1000 and the Trent XWB for the A350.
The core of the package will be the introduction of elliptical leading-edge modifications throughout the entire compression system, including improved high- and intermediate-pressure (HP/IP) compressor blades and vanes. The modification, which also applies to the fan and outlet guide vanes, improves flow interactions by altering boundary layer thickness and increasing laminar flow. The changes are similar to elliptical leading-edge modifications made to the HP compressor introduced recently to International Aero Engines’ V2500 in the SelectOne program, as well as the Trent 700EP. The elliptical feature also is part of the baseline fan design for the Trent 1000 and XWB.
“The package includes tweaks to the air management system, and that also affects fuel burn,” says Crawford. “We’re very confident in being able to achieve the 1% post-2011. The program is already defined, the detailed design is being done and bits are in manufacture. Testing is next year and will cover maturity modifications to upgrade areas we’ve seen on early engines.” These include “potential ‘wear out’ areas we want to address, such as seal segments and optimized tip clearance.”
As with the Trent 700EP, the 900EP enhancement will be offered as an upgrade kit for existing engines. “The modifications are all optional and are completely interchangeable. You will get the full 1% if you install all the parts,” says Richard Keen, Airbus programs marketing director. “From 2011 this will be the production standard for all new Trent 900 orders,” he adds.
With the problems being experienced by the Trent 900 and also with the Trent 1000 for Boeing’s Dreamliner, one obvious question is whether the cut-throat competition for fuel efficiency is leading to a trade-off between efficiency on the one hand and reductions in clearances and compromises on wear considerations on the other.
The k2p blog 