Rolls Royce faces technical and legal battles

What a bad time for Rolls Royce:

August 2: Uncontained Failure on a Trent 1000 in Darby

August 30: Uncontained Failure at a Qantas B747-400 powered by RB211’s

November 4: Uncontained Failure at a Qantas A380-842 powered by Trent 900’s

Not to mention the more minor problems two B747-400 had with a RB211 (apparently a contained failure) and with fuel hydraulics.

And now: Pratt sues Rolls on patent infringement regarding the Trent 900 and Trent 1000 fan blades.

Let us recall: not long ago, in August, Rolls Royce filed a lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney, claiming that P&W would infringe their patented design for swept fan blades with their fan blades on the GP7000 and the PW1000G (and others). This case is due to go before a jury in the US in the first half of 2011.

Pratt & Whitney apparently fights back now, filing also a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), which could be very damaging for Rolls Royce, as if the ITC rules in Pratt’s favor, RR could get blocked to ship any more Trent 1000’s to Boeing. And if the UK courts come to the same conclusion, RR would also have a problem to ship the Trent 900 to Airbus.

But could that be Pratt’s real interest? Not only P&W and RR would be deadly enemies forever, also Airbus and Boeing would not be happy about P&W, as deliveries for the B787 and A380 to customers with Trent 900 and 1000 engines would be (further) delayed or in the worst case impossible. As a last consequence you could expect RR to go bankrupt.

So I doubt that this is what P&W is really looking for – even if Airbus goes ahead with the A320NEO and P&W developing a version of their PW1000G Geared Turbo Fan for it without Rolls Royce, the two companies will still be tied for centuries, as the V2500 will continue to be shipped until 2015 at least and aftermarket activities will continue  - say – twenty years plus.

So what could be the real goal behind the legal actions?

My guess: P&W wants RR to “cooperate” a little bit more on the narrowbody front:

RR officially states that reengining the current Boeing and Airbus narrowbodies does not make any sense. But it sounded a little bit different until RR was officially put out of the reengining game by Airbus. And as RR has no interest to participate as  a junior partner in the GTF, RR would be out of the narrowbody market at least until a clean sheet design either by Boeing or Airbus arrives. So one can imagine that RR will do everything (legal, of course) they can do to prevent the Airbus reengining by hindering and blocking P&W’s PW1000G to be one of the –NEO engines.

I do not know how the IAE contract between Pratt, RR and the other partners looks like, but maybe RR can block an engine offering for the A320NEO by P&W – or block order conversions from the V2500 to a PW1000G once the A320NEO is officially offered to costumers.

It will be interesting to see how RR will come out of these two battles:

-          the technical battle: RR has to regain confidence on the Trent 900/1000 – and maybe the XWB

-          the legal battle with P&W

Picture of ruptured disk

Sorry, but somehow I cannot edit the latest post anymore - so here is the picture of the ruptured Trent 900 engine disk:

The Qantas A380 engine failure - a disaster for Rolls Royce?

A first serious incident happened with an A380 – the first Qantas A380, registered VH-OQA, made an emergency landing in Singapore, not long after taking off from the same airport.

Pictures show that the aft part of the No.2 Trent 900 nacelle is missing. Eye witnesses from the ground said that there was a loud bang (or explosion) and trails of smoke after that.

All this points to an uncontained failure. In recent months we saw two other uncontained failures in RR engines – first a RB211, also with Qantas, but on a B747-400 and then the Trent1000 on a testbed in Derby.

If at least the Trent1000 failure and the -so far- suspected failure in the Trent 900 of the A380 are in any conjunction remains to be seen. At least it is not good publicity for Rolls Royce in a time that is not easy for the No.2 engine maker:

• Deliveries of the Trent 900 are, due to the production problems and slow ramp-up of the A380, not in numbers that were anticipated in the business case. Any profit from this engine program is delayed by years (the same is also true for the GP7000, of course).
• Even heavier probably , the Trent 1000 drags on profit margins. The 787 is late by almost three years – if the first delivery in mid-February will be met. According to the original ramp-up plan, there should have been around 200 B787 in service by now, maybe half of if powered by the Trent 1000. The performance inprovement programs, aimed to meat the promised fuel burn at the aircraft probably doubled development costs.
• Development of the Trent XWB is in full swing, costing a lot of money, too.

So one could suspect that RR is running into a cash problem. Luckily there are the Trent 700, the leading engine for the A330, and the V2500 and Airbus upping deliveries for the A320. But if these two "cash cow" programmes can save RR in the long run, if there would be a main technical problem in the Trent 900/1000 (and maybe XWB), is questionable. A fundamental technical problem, a desígn fault, could end up in the grounding of the whole Trent powered A380 fleet. Qantas grounded their fleet of six A380 immediately after the incident, Singapore would be hit heavy with eleven A380 in their fleet today, Lufthansa so far took delivery of four aircraft.

It is too early to call today’s failure a disaster for Rolls Royce (and subsequently, for Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and, if the worst comes to the worst, Boeing and all their B787 Trent 100 customers) – but the possibility is there…

Update: meanwhile is is obvious that an uncontaines failure happened. Pictures are showing damage to the wing - Singapore Airlines effectively grounded their fleet also. Officially, all flights are just "delayed" until the engines are inspected, but a 100% inspection of the disks for such a failure would mean to take the engine apart...

Update 2:
Just found the preliminary report of the uncontained failure in the RB211-524, which happened on August 30th. It can be found here.
The key observations are (quoted from the report):

• All of the turbine blades had separated from the IP turbine disk.

• Blades from the three LP turbine stages were either fractured through the airfoil section or separated from the disk.

• The LP stage 1 nozzle guide vanes were destroyed. The remaining LP nozzle stages were substantially damaged.

• The LP turbine bearing and adjacent phonic wheel and speed probes were destroyed.

• The IP shaft was severed towards the aft end.

This picture is obviously a part of a turbine disk that fell on the island of Batam - we will soon hear if it is also the IPT disk - at least all baldes are missing.

The Trent 1000 failure also happened in the IP Turbine. If now yesterday's failure also can be tracde back to the IPT, I would be happy not to be employed in Derby...

New 787 delays?

Flightblogger today reports about possible new delivery delays of the 787 due to rework being done before delivering the aircraft to the customers.

As long as Boeing does not confirm that there is a new delay we have to talk about speculations – but so far, every time such a speculation came across there was at least some truth in it (just to sound polite…).

The article suggests that the first aircraft will still be delivered to ANA in mid February, but won’t be able to enter service without further modifications. I guess this is something the ANA management will not be happy with: they won’t take delivery of an aircraft without being able to take it with them – just makes no sense, even if we can assume that ANA will effectively get this aircraft for free.

But the exact timing of this first delivery does only have symbolic meaning anyway. (One of) the important question(s) is: when will Boeing be able to deliver the “Dreamliner” in numbers?

We would need more information about the specific problems and modifications that Boeing deals with. Jon Ostrower lists a few of them:

·        a flight deck window popping sound

·        cabin condensation issues

·        reworking passenger doors

·        workmanship issues on the aircraft's horizontal stabilizer (well-known problem)

·        changes to the Trent 1000 engine (Package B)

The pooping sound of the window should not be a big issue – proper insulation should care for that.

Cabin condensation seems to point to a problem with the air conditioning. That could mean everything: if they are lucky they just have to adjust the software – if they are unlucky, the humidifier are too small and have to be redesigned.

Reworking the passenger doors should not be the thing that holds up deliveries for months – reworking the stabilizers was probably more complicated, but is not a new problem and led to the latest (official) delivery slip – among the problems with the Trent engines.

So from what is being mentioned, a new slippage for months would not be explainable. The question is: which problems are not mentioned here?

I guess Boeing will soon have to give answers to the Flightblogger report – they should tell the public the whole story, they already lost too much credibility to just release the obvious…

Thinking about LEAP-X and TECH-X

Over the last week there was growing speculation about when the LEAP-X engine, one of the candidates for the A320NEO, would be ready for the planned EIS in late 2015. I briefly discussed that matter in my last post, referring to an article in the AviationWeek. Meanwhile, also Ernest Arvai from AirInsight posted a story, speculating what might be behind the A320NEO decision holdup.

So let us go back in history – well, it’s just two or three years anyway…:

In 2008 at the Farnborough Airshow, when CFM for the first time talked about the LEAP-X in public, a certification in 2016 was announced as possible.

This announcement meant a turning point for CFM, as with the LEAP-X CFM changed their engine architecture strategy from a core with a single stage HPT to a 2 stage HPT. Simultaneously, the HPC got an additional 2 stages, driving up the pressure ratio from 16 to about 22 and thus becoming (more or less) a scaled down GEnx HPC. Thus, by changing the core architecture, the LEAP56 became the LEAP-X.

The reason for this radical change was rising fuel prices, changing the balance between fuel costs and maintenance costs in the equation for determining the operating costs of an aircraft. Fuel became the No.1 in operating costs for many airlines, particularly in the U.S., by then exceeding labor costs.

But obviously the preparations for LEAP56 and tests for the single stage HPT core were too advanced to stop the whole effort. This core was now called the eCore1 and was tested in two campaigns starting in 2009. The eCore2 will be tested in mid 2011, a second build is foreseen for mid 2012. The first engine to test should spin in early 2013 with certification expected by CFM sometimes in 2014.

In 2008, the LEAP-X handout (thanks, Scott!) at Farnborough showed a similar timeline with the eCore2 testing at the end of 2011 and a “Full Engine Demo” in 2012.

So the core tests moved a little bit to the right, the FETT moved a year out, but certification is aimed two years earlier.

An here the speculation begins:

• CFM has dramatically accelerated their pace of technology development
• CFM ousted some technologies to be ready for a 2014 certification, sacrificing SFC and maybe adding these technologies in a second step

Then there is the TECH-X. Building on the same technologies, the same core, scaled down from the LEAP-X, this engine was chosen by Bombardier to power their new Global Family members (Global 7000 and Global 8000). The Global 7000 will hit the market in 2016. What does that mean for the engine? Take a look at the rival, the Gulfstream 650. First flight happened in November 2009, certification is planned for 2011, first deliveries to customers are slated for 2012. Flight tests thus take about 2 years. Even if we assume that Bombardier will hand over the first aircraft right after certification we can assume that the flight test will take about two years, so the TECH-X engine has to be certified in late 2014 to meet the (late) 2016 delivery target.

The GE press release sets the official timetable like this:

• eCore Demonstrator 2 in 2011
• first engine run in 2013

That would allow a certification in 2014 – so far, so good.

But then I stumbled across this article from Flightglobal’s John Croft, stating that building up the first engine would be in 2013 with the engine running in 2014. That would allow for a certification only in 2015. I am puzzled…

Now – the whole thing would not really be that important as there is no competing engine on the Global 7000/8000. But if one transfers that story over to the A320NEO, this could be the key to many answers surrounding the questions why the widely anticipated launch of the –NEO did not happen so far.

CFM did not react so far about the growing speculations that a late 2015 EIS LEAP-X for the A320NEO might be not the LEAP-X with the fuel burn vs. the current CFM56 (-15%) as advertised. The aero-geek-public is keen to know (at least I am), so let's wait for a clarification on this matter coming from Cincinnati or Villaroche.