News Qantas A380 makes emergency landing in Singapore

[Urwumpe]

Hydraulic system seems to be damaged. Leading edge slats, gear doors and part of the spoilers didn't move. Luckily the debris did not shoot towards the cabin...

Isn't that unlikely actually, since one engine failed, taking one hydraulic system with it, so even damaging just one other hydraulic system would mean that secondary hydraulics fail. primary hydraulics like landing gear or control surfaces would still work.

 

[Turbinator]

There are 4 major engine manufactures that make commercial airliner engines, all commercial passenger jets use any one of these:

• General Electric
• Engine Alliance (50/50 joint venture between General Electric and Pratt & Whitney)
• Pratt & Whitney
• Rolls Royce

The Engine Alliance GP7000 was originally intended to power Boeing Commercial Airplanes's cancelled 747-500X/-600X, these were cancelled owing to lack of demand from airlines. Instead, the GP7000 has been re-optimised for use on the Airbus A380 superjumbo. In that market it is competing with the Rolls-Royce Trent 900. The GP7000 is built around the General Electric 90-110B/115B core and contains a Pratt & Whitney fan and low-pressure system design. The engine has a long family history and is far more mature than the brand new design of the Trent 900. The competing Rolls-Royce Trent 900 was named as the lead engine for the then-named A3XX in 1996 and was initially selected by almost all A380 customers. However the GE/PW engine increased its share of the A380 engine market in a single transaction, with Emirates' order of 55 GP7000-powered A380-800s, comprising over one quarter of A380 sales (as of September 2007). This latest incident looks to be the final blow to the unproven Trent 900. (or more like proven faulty).











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[Evil_Onyx]

Please don't jump to conclusions,

This latest incident looks to be the final blow to the unproven Trent 900. (or more like proven faulty).

How so? one engine failure (my understanding of the other issues with the trent 900 where instrumentation and software related) no matter how catastrophic could have been caused by bad maintenance by the airliner or one of 100 other reasons unrelated to the design or construction of the engine.

I would keep your mind open until all the details of the incident are know.

 

[Cairan]

My 2 cents on this incident is that turbine fragments severed some hydraulic lines, resulting in loss of slat deployment and landing gear door failure to retract, but more importantly, and that's where it is going to hurt both Airbus and Rolls Royce: the event damaged control elements of the other engine on the same wing.

This might have been caused by debris from Engine 2 damaging control wire bundles going to Engine 1, such as fuel pump controls, engine cut-off valves and similar critical elements.

This is one of the reason behind the grounding of A380 equipped with Trent 900, in my opinion... They won't shout it aloud, but this piece of information regarding difficulties in shutting down the other engine is an eyebrow raiser...

 

[Urwumpe]

Also, the Trent 900 is not less proven than other engine designs... I just like to remind that the 777 also used brand new GE-90 engines and was supposed to use just two of them... how had these engines been more proven than Trent 900 engines back then?

Also it was still just the first major incident with this type of engine. There is no chain of problems, there was just something, that shouldn't have happened.

Problems can happen to any engine. The task is about fixing these problems.

---------- Post added at 10:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:52 PM ----------

This is one of the reason behind the grounding of A380 equipped with Trent 900, in my opinion... They won't shout it aloud, but this piece of information regarding difficulties in shutting down the other engine is an eyebrow raiser...

Can also be a simple software error. I wouldn't raise eyebrows too soon there.

 

[Turbinator]

So far there are 128 orders for GP7000 engines and 90 for Trent 900. Out of those 90 there where only 20 Trent 900's delivered so far, and 70 are yet to be assembled. The investors can over-react in response to the market and change their order.

 

[Urwumpe]

So far there are 128 orders for GP7000 engines and 90 for Trent 900. Out of those 90 there where only 20 Trent 900's delivered so far, and 70 are yet to be assembled. The investors can over-react in response to the market and change their order.

Yes - stupidity never ends. But still you guess more than you know and investors don't like to be guessing wrong.

 

[tl8]

So far there are 128 orders for GP7000 engines and 90 for Trent 900. Out of those 90 there where only 20 Trent 900's delivered so far, and 70 are yet to be assembled. The investors can over-react in response to the market and change their order.

Unlikely. The bulk of airlines are going with the Trent 900. Emirates is the only airline so far that uses GE (Air France also has 3 on GE but are a minor player). They also have an order for 90 A380s. This blows out the figures for your order numbers

 

[Keatah]

As an example of the precision with which these engines are made, look at these pics. Note the tolerance between the fan and shroud. We're looking at a few slips of paper, or thin pieces of cardboard like french-fry containers. It must maintain that from +180 degrees down to -100 degrees F.. And at all RPM's and gyroscopic moments. The fan is 116 inches in diameter and generates like 70,000 pounds of thrust, depending on the exact configuration and set-up. Today's hi-bypass turbofans are little more than 24-bladed propellers in a shrouded tube. They only spin at around 900 RPM, though inside the core, you've got 16,000 RPM going on. The core of the engine is doesn't produce much thrust, by design. It is optimized to extract energy from the hot combustion gasses and generate a rotational force on the fan. Oftentimes there are variable stator blades in the hp section, pretty cool shtuff! The multi-stage axial compressor in the CORE of the engine delivers a little over 600psi of pressure to the combustion chamber area.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurent_jegou/5012174444/sizes/o/in/set-72157624879988271/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurent_jegou/5011572913/sizes/o/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurent_jegou/5012173838/sizes/o/in/set-72157624879988271/

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_GE90[/ame]

 

[tblaxland]

An update on the grounded fleet:

Qantas uncovers more engine problems
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/08/3059568.htm

Qantas says it has found problems with more of its A380 jet engines, dashing hopes of an early return to service for the massive aircraft.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce says three engines on aircraft have been taken off for closer inspection.

"On three of the engines what we found is slight anomalies - oil where oil shouldn't be on the engines," he said.

"We're just trying to check what the cause of that would be.

"These are new engines on new aircraft and they shouldn't have these issues at this stage, so it's given us indication of an area for us to focus into.

"We are keeping an open mind on it but... we think it could have been a materials issue on the engine or a design issue on the engine."

 

[Linguofreak]

My 2 cents on this incident is that turbine fragments severed some hydraulic lines, resulting in loss of slat deployment and landing gear door failure to retract, but more importantly, and that's where it is going to hurt both Airbus and Rolls Royce: the event damaged control elements of the other engine on the same wing.

Well, the big thing is that fragments left the engine casing through any route other than the tailpipe at all: If that happens, you can't control where they go, and they can hit anything. That hydraulic lines or other control elements should be cut once the fragments leave the engine is not surprising. The big issue is that the engine casing is, per FAA regulations, supposed to be able to contain a blade-off event.

 

[Urwumpe]

So we are back at lubrication problems...

But that is not yet automatically a design issue... oil at the wrong places can also be caused by using the wrong oil.

Some more information about the Trent 900 issues - the problems are actually not that new:

http://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/easa_ad_2010_0008.pdf

And for reference:

http://www.easa.europa.eu/certifica...B211_Trent_900_Series_engines-04-24052007.pdf

Essentially, the IP shaft can after excessive early wear move rearward beyond its tolerance and cause leaking of oil inside the engine and loss of performance.

 

[tl8]

Looks like an oil issue. Makes sense SIA have grounded 3 of their planes after finding oil.

http://news.stv.tv/business/208251-european-agency-orders-new-a380-engine-inspections/

 

[Urwumpe]

It was caused by an oil fire between the IP shaft and the HP shaft.

http://easa.europa.eu/home.php
http://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/2010-0236-E

The directive is pretty hard, inspections every 20 flights is pretty frequent, this could really injure Rolls-Royce until they have a fixed version out.

 

[Turbinator]

One piece of the puzzle still remains private; why was the turbine failure uncontained?

(derbies did not exit trough the tail pipe)

 

[Urwumpe]

One piece of the puzzle still remains private; why was the turbine failure uncontained?

(derbies did not exit trough the tail pipe)

Maybe the answer is, that the destruction did not happen as known turbine failures, which are used as reference for securing the damage.

The damage came from the shaft cavity, where the burning oil increased temperatures rapidly, and the earliest debris part along the flight path was a half of a heavy gear, that was related to the auxiliary engine systems. Maybe nobody did expect such a gear to fail and explode out of the engine, since it was much heavier and storing more energy than a turbine blade.

Uncontained engine failures can not be prevented - you can only change the chances. something can always explode out, if things go wrong the wrong way.

 

[Keatah]

I've always felt that the three-shaft design of the Trent 900 is more trouble than it's worth. This is complexity that is unnecessary, and overall, saves only about 2,000 - 3,000 pounds of weight per engine when compared against an equivalent thrust/weight ratio offering from G.E.

 

[Urwumpe]

I've always felt that the three-shaft design of the Trent 900 is more trouble than it's worth. This is complexity that is unnecessary, and overall, saves only about 2,000 - 3,000 pounds of weight per engine when compared against an equivalent thrust/weight ratio offering from G.E.

You forget one quantity: Fuel consumption. The three-shaft design also consumes much less fuel than two-shaft designs per Newton thrust. And the weight savings are significant for a plane, four tons of dry mass less means a lot of fuel consumption again saved.

Also, the Trent family was flying happily for years now with three shafts, without problems, whatever causes the problems of the Trent 900, it is a pure Trent 900 problem. The first three-shaft engine by Rolls-Royce was the RB211 that powered the Lockheed Tristar since 1972, and later powered also the 747 without incidents. The Trent 800 is, because of its advantages, the most popular engine on Boeing 777 planes.

And the very same three-shaft engine core is actually powering many British Navy ships as gas turbine, and that is not done with engines that are unreliable by design.

 

[Cairan]

For news about the accident:

The Qantas crew whose A380 suffered an uncontained engine failure earlier this month had their hands full in getting the super jumbo back to Singapore. Shrapnel from the engine disabled one of two main hydraulic systems, hampered the fuel transfer system, punched a hole in the forward wing spar and caused a major fuel leak. The cascading nature of such failures meant the pilots couldn't dump enough fuel to bring the aircraft down to its maximum landing weight and the fuel left in the airplane was unbalanced. Flaps, slats and spoilers couldn't be fully deployed and the gear had to be dropped manually. Once it was on the ground, the anti-lock brakes didn't work and, since the damaged engine was an inboard one, there was only one left for reverse thrust (the outboard engines of A380s don't have reversers because they often overhang the grass and might be FOD damaged). The heavy, significantly disabled aircraft needed virtually all of the 13,123 feet of available runway. The whole wing might have to be replaced and the aircraft is expected to be out of commission for months. Meanwhile, the cause of the engine problem has been determined and it's just adding to the PR problems facing manufacturer Rolls-Royce.

---------- Post added at 09:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 AM ----------

Here's a little more info I got from someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, you get the idea Color coded for ECAM-like immersion :lol:

Here are just SOME of the problems Richard had in Singapore last week aboard QF32.... I won't bother mentioning the engine explosion!.... oops... mentioned the engine explosion, sorry.....

* massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (the beast has 11 tanks, including in the horizontal stabilizer on the tail)
* massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank
* a hole on the flap canoe/fairing that you could fit your upper body through
* the aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer functions
* fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above
* bloody great hole in the upper wing surface
* partial failure of leading edge slats
* partial failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers
* shrapnel damage to the flaps
* TOTAL loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (beast has 2 x 5,000 PSI systems, Green and Yellow)
* manual extension of landing gear
* loss of 1 generator and associated systems
* loss of brake anti-skid system
* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using normal method after landing due to major damage to systems
* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using using the fire switch!!!!!!!! Therefore, no fire protection was available for that engine after the explosion in #2
* ECAM warnings about major fuel imbalance because of fuel leaks on left side, that were UNABLE to be fixed with cross-feeding
* fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, possible major CofG out-of-balance condition for landing. Yikes!
* and much more to come..........

Richard was in the left seat, FO in the right), SO in the 2nd obs seat (right rear, also with his own Radio Management Panel, so he probably did most of the coordination with the ground), Capt Dave Evans in the 1st obs seat (middle). He is a Check & Training Captain who was training Harry Wubbin to be one also. Harry was in the 3rd obs seat (left rear). All 5 guys were FLAT OUT, especially the FO who would have been processing complicated 'ECAM' messages and procedures that were seemingly never-ending!

---------- Post added at 10:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:39 AM ----------

http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/...s-a-flying-wreck/story-e6frfq80-1225952363505

 

[Urwumpe]

I consider the damage to the wing spar much more severe, even if it did not make subsystems fail... it could have led to structural failure of the wing and instant crash.