Rolls Royce Trent Aero Engines

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.

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.

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