6 ms·

I remember watching a documentary about the design of the trent 1000 and being amazed by how small the team was. In fact it was held up where I work as a demons

by sgt101 8y ago

I remember watching a documentary about the design of the trent 1000 and being amazed by how small the team was. In fact it was held up where I work as a demonstration of how inefficient we are. But now we see the consequence of penny pinching short sighted know nothing accountants running a company. How much has this cost in contrast to an extra 20 engineers on the team?

nixgeek 8y ago
I’m not sure adding 20 more engineers guarantees these problems don’t happen. There is very little substitute for real experience running a design for millions of flight hours, as the article points out.
- AdamM12 8y ago
  Makes me wonder if they are developing talent for the next generation or are we gonna have a similar issue as farmers in the US (avg age is like 65)? Albeit the job is more attractive .
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    What fraction of airplane engines are produced in companies that look like family farms? If you look at aerospace, the craziest rocket company (RocketLab) looks like it has an average age much less than NASA, with SpaceX in the middle. Which is about what you would expect.
    - AdamM12 8y ago
      It was a pretty loose comparison and only used it to allude to my question. Mainly was noting how OP said they were a really small team and very experienced. Also discussing jet turbines at nearly century old companies not start ups.
      - greglindahl 8y ago
        I used a related aerospace field because I don't think any "new" companies produce airplane jet turbines -- the newest ones are joint ventures of older companies. However, the examples do produce rocket engines, whose preburners are turbines.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Farming will be AI based and corporate. It’s self contained with most edge cases well known and insurable.
- darkmighty 8y ago
  Well there is little, but there is also some. There's a whole field of accelerated testing of components, by degrading various variables, e.g. increasing temperature, vibration, sounds, corrosive environment, materials, etc., and then using curves of exaggerated failure times to predict failure times under nominal conditions. (after making tons of models and analysis) You can also improve your simulation (here the sky is the limit). It really depends on the cost of mishaps and design failures, if it's high enough you can almost always improve design with additional expenditure.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    Are you suggesting that Rolls Royce didn't know this?
    - trhway 8y ago
      Well, they didn't matched the resonant frequency of the blades with that of the enfine vibration at high thrust. Probably didn't allocated enough people and resources for even such basic stuff.
    - darkmighty 8y ago
      It was just a comment on how it is possible to accelerate testing. I wasn't suggesting anything, just discussing and exchanging information. Whether they used this, it's probable, but to what extent only an employee could tell.
- dingaling 8y ago
  The Soviets used to run their new airliners on cargo and mail flights for two or three years before introducing them to passenger service. Great for real-World debugging but imagine the anguish if that was proposed by the FAA...
southern_cross 8y ago
Mechanically jet engines are pretty simple devices, though - basically just a bunch of connected fans. But when covered with wires and pipes and such, they may look quite complicated at first glance. What line of business are you in that your team was considered inefficient in comparison?
- greglindahl 8y ago
  It's worth noticing that China has been unable to figure out to build high-performance jet engines, to the point that most of their military and civilian engines are imported. The metallurgy is apparently quite difficult, commercial product volumes are high, and customer expectations are even higher.
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    Yes, the materials issue is usually the root of the problem - weight vs. strength vs. durability. (I expect that manufacturing to the needed tolerances is pretty hard, too.) Modern jet engines are so optimized for these factors, and also for fuel efficiency, that the same general designs are now used for power generation on the ground, where things like weight don't really matter.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    This is why AICC bought the An-225. They don't just get the planes, they get the tooling and training to build their own, including the engines. And at this point, even a multiple-generations-old high-bypass turbofan is a big jump for China's domestic industry. They are not "easy" or "simple" to make and understand once you get down to the metallurgy and the fabrication techniques for stuff like the fan and compressor blades.
    - southern_cross 8y ago
      Designs for the basic jet engine date back to at least the 1920s, and basic operating principles date back much, much further. Jet aircraft were actually flying by the 1940s, and those engines were built using the relatively primitive metallurgical and manufacturing techniques of the day. So, as I said, _mechanically_ jet engines are relatively simple devices. Materials, manufacturing, control systems, fuel efficiency, noise abatement and all that may be a very different story.
ubernostrum 8y ago
If you think "penny pinching short sighted know nothing accountants" are the cause of a small team, I think you perhaps don't understand the domain involved. To borrow a popular phrase, modern jet engines are literally made of black-magic fuckery. The advanced metallurgy and fabrication techniques that go into their design and manufacture are such that even if you wanted to double or triple the size of one of those teams, there may simply not be enough people in the world today who have the requisite background. And it's also not a matter of "oh, just go read these papers and get up to speed"; the engine manufacturers derive most of their advantage from the fact that they can do things nobody else can do, and they don't publish all the deep stuff they know.
- btrettel 8y ago
  Mechanical engineering PhD student here. I'm skeptical that there's a shortage of the engineers needed for this. I know someone who interviewed at a major jet engine manufacturer. I don't know if he would have got the job or not, but he had no interest in working there after the interview. From what he described the place seemed to be a hybrid of the worst of academia and corporations. Publish or perish, poor job security, bad location, etc. I don't recall what the pay was, but I don't think it was spectacular. I won't be applying there when I graduate. If they really needed more engineers, I think they would be making the place more attractive to work at. Some representatives of the company visited our research group once after the person I mentioned graduated. I didn't get the impression that the company was short of people in their jet engines division aside from one area they mentioned (and there's no shortage of qualified people in that area at my university). Plus, one of the people who was doing the interview actually said they (partially) transfered out of the jet engines division. I got the impression the jet engines division was downsizing overall. Also, assuming that required knowledge is not public, not documenting important internal developments is a bad practice. I doubt jet engine manufacturers make this mistake. The company representatives, as I recall, seemed to want someone working specifically in the area they were looking to hire, but they didn't seem to need someone who was familiar with the exact methods or materials they used. Learning on the job is probably part of the job description.
  - 8y ago
bigtones 8y ago
Rolled Royce have over 50,000 employees directly involved in designing, manufacturing and testing engines. The team to design an engine is well over 500 people and takes more than a decade from concept to first production run. It's by no means a small team or a small undertaking.

by sgt101 8y ago

nixgeek 8y ago

I’m not sure adding 20 more engineers guarantees these problems don’t happen. There is very little substitute for real experience running a design for millions of flight hours, as the article points out.

AdamM12 8y ago
Makes me wonder if they are developing talent for the next generation or are we gonna have a similar issue as farmers in the US (avg age is like 65)? Albeit the job is more attractive .
- greglindahl 8y ago
  What fraction of airplane engines are produced in companies that look like family farms? If you look at aerospace, the craziest rocket company (RocketLab) looks like it has an average age much less than NASA, with SpaceX in the middle. Which is about what you would expect.
  - AdamM12 8y ago
    It was a pretty loose comparison and only used it to allude to my question. Mainly was noting how OP said they were a really small team and very experienced. Also discussing jet turbines at nearly century old companies not start ups.
    - greglindahl 8y ago
      I used a related aerospace field because I don't think any "new" companies produce airplane jet turbines -- the newest ones are joint ventures of older companies. However, the examples do produce rocket engines, whose preburners are turbines.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Farming will be AI based and corporate. It’s self contained with most edge cases well known and insurable.
darkmighty 8y ago
Well there is little, but there is also some. There's a whole field of accelerated testing of components, by degrading various variables, e.g. increasing temperature, vibration, sounds, corrosive environment, materials, etc., and then using curves of exaggerated failure times to predict failure times under nominal conditions. (after making tons of models and analysis) You can also improve your simulation (here the sky is the limit). It really depends on the cost of mishaps and design failures, if it's high enough you can almost always improve design with additional expenditure.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Are you suggesting that Rolls Royce didn't know this?
  - trhway 8y ago
    Well, they didn't matched the resonant frequency of the blades with that of the enfine vibration at high thrust. Probably didn't allocated enough people and resources for even such basic stuff.
  - darkmighty 8y ago
    It was just a comment on how it is possible to accelerate testing. I wasn't suggesting anything, just discussing and exchanging information. Whether they used this, it's probable, but to what extent only an employee could tell.
dingaling 8y ago
The Soviets used to run their new airliners on cargo and mail flights for two or three years before introducing them to passenger service. Great for real-World debugging but imagine the anguish if that was proposed by the FAA...

southern_cross 8y ago

Mechanically jet engines are pretty simple devices, though - basically just a bunch of connected fans. But when covered with wires and pipes and such, they may look quite complicated at first glance. What line of business are you in that your team was considered inefficient in comparison?

greglindahl 8y ago
It's worth noticing that China has been unable to figure out to build high-performance jet engines, to the point that most of their military and civilian engines are imported. The metallurgy is apparently quite difficult, commercial product volumes are high, and customer expectations are even higher.
- southern_cross 8y ago
  Yes, the materials issue is usually the root of the problem - weight vs. strength vs. durability. (I expect that manufacturing to the needed tolerances is pretty hard, too.) Modern jet engines are so optimized for these factors, and also for fuel efficiency, that the same general designs are now used for power generation on the ground, where things like weight don't really matter.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  This is why AICC bought the An-225. They don't just get the planes, they get the tooling and training to build their own, including the engines. And at this point, even a multiple-generations-old high-bypass turbofan is a big jump for China's domestic industry. They are not "easy" or "simple" to make and understand once you get down to the metallurgy and the fabrication techniques for stuff like the fan and compressor blades.
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    Designs for the basic jet engine date back to at least the 1920s, and basic operating principles date back much, much further. Jet aircraft were actually flying by the 1940s, and those engines were built using the relatively primitive metallurgical and manufacturing techniques of the day. So, as I said, _mechanically_ jet engines are relatively simple devices. Materials, manufacturing, control systems, fuel efficiency, noise abatement and all that may be a very different story.

ubernostrum 8y ago

If you think "penny pinching short sighted know nothing accountants" are the cause of a small team, I think you perhaps don't understand the domain involved. To borrow a popular phrase, modern jet engines are literally made of black-magic fuckery. The advanced metallurgy and fabrication techniques that go into their design and manufacture are such that even if you wanted to double or triple the size of one of those teams, there may simply not be enough people in the world today who have the requisite background. And it's also not a matter of "oh, just go read these papers and get up to speed"; the engine manufacturers derive most of their advantage from the fact that they can do things nobody else can do, and they don't publish all the deep stuff they know.

btrettel 8y ago
Mechanical engineering PhD student here. I'm skeptical that there's a shortage of the engineers needed for this. I know someone who interviewed at a major jet engine manufacturer. I don't know if he would have got the job or not, but he had no interest in working there after the interview. From what he described the place seemed to be a hybrid of the worst of academia and corporations. Publish or perish, poor job security, bad location, etc. I don't recall what the pay was, but I don't think it was spectacular. I won't be applying there when I graduate. If they really needed more engineers, I think they would be making the place more attractive to work at. Some representatives of the company visited our research group once after the person I mentioned graduated. I didn't get the impression that the company was short of people in their jet engines division aside from one area they mentioned (and there's no shortage of qualified people in that area at my university). Plus, one of the people who was doing the interview actually said they (partially) transfered out of the jet engines division. I got the impression the jet engines division was downsizing overall. Also, assuming that required knowledge is not public, not documenting important internal developments is a bad practice. I doubt jet engine manufacturers make this mistake. The company representatives, as I recall, seemed to want someone working specifically in the area they were looking to hire, but they didn't seem to need someone who was familiar with the exact methods or materials they used. Learning on the job is probably part of the job description.
- 8y ago

bigtones 8y ago

Rolled Royce have over 50,000 employees directly involved in designing, manufacturing and testing engines. The team to design an engine is well over 500 people and takes more than a decade from concept to first production run. It's by no means a small team or a small undertaking.