Slashdot Mirror
World's Largest Commercial Aircraft Engine Fired Up For The First Time (gizmag.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Gizmag: With a front fan spreading a full 11 ft (3.35 m), the GE9X is a world record holder and generates thrust in the order of 100,000 lb. To accommodate the aeronautical behemoth, the Peebles facility was recently upgraded with a larger air intake, extra fuel tanks to feed the giant engine, and high temperature gear to deal with the hotter, more efficient design. GE says that the GE9X is currently undergoing its first Full Engine To Test (FETT). This is the next level of the test series, which began in 2011 at the component level, and marks the first test of the complete system, which comes only six months after the engine design was finalized. GE says that this relatively early testing was to ensure that the test data was available as soon as possible for the certification engines, which are scheduled to be installed in GE Aviation's flying test bed for certification of flight testing in 2018.
In the article is says the engine is designed for Boeing 777X's. Wikipedia says that the 777X won't have an option of engines from different manufacturers due to the expense and diminished efficiency of making a plane compatible with more than one engine, which possibly implies that this engine is bespoke to those planes and might not be as a good a fit for other platforms.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Bigger engines are more efficient, so this will actually reduce the amount of fuel burned.
GE won't put this engine on an Airbus aircraft, because they have a profit sharing stake in the Boeing 777 and 777X (literally, they funded some of the 777-300 and 777X development in order to have an engine monopoly on the type and a share of the profits of each one delivered) so they have a vested interest in not competing with themselves.
Its been a sticking point for Airbus for several years - the A380 has an Engine Alliance engine option (which GE is part of), but EA have been extremely lackluster in moving that engine forward, to the point where their prestige customer (Emirates Airline) has defected to Rolls Royce with their latest orders.
GE won't hang an engine off of the Airbus A350XWB either, because Airbus wants the entire series to be covered by any such engine option (originally, the A350XWB-800, -900 and -1000, now just the latter two as the -800 has been dropped) and GE wouldn't agree to that because the -1000 competes with the 777 and 777X.
So the only manufacturer that will use this engine is Boeing.
"Ladies & gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. If you look out the right side of the aircraft, you'll notice flight 195 challenging us to a race. I've turned the fasten your seat belt sign back on because this shit is about to get real."
Wikipedia is wrong - the reason the 777X only has GE as a supplier is because GE and Boeing are carrying on their profit sharing investment agreement they started on the 777-300, giving GE a monopoly on the aircraft type in return for GE providing an investment and assuming some risk sharing on the aircraft itself, in addition to GE funding the engine development.
The bits that are unique between different engine options on an aircraft are limited to:
1. the pylon (although the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350XWB have common pylons for the engines, so thats not an issue any more)
2. the design of the actual intake (some engines are designed around a shorter length intake, some are designed around longer length intakes - basically there's an optimal intake length for a given engine, but in actuality the engine intake design is often handed to the engine manufacturer which offers the better deal to the airframe manufacturer, so one engine will often be running at slightly less than optimal efficiency because its using an intake designed for its competitor).
3. the engine control unit and engine management system code
Beyond the above, an engine can be integrated onto another airframe easily enough - if you want to pay for the certification costs that is.
The main thing which ties an engine type to a particular airframe however is the thrust rating - you want enough thrust for the airframe to do its job, but you don't want too much thrust ability in the engine as that costs weight (you need more or larger parts to move more air through the engine) - you can derate an engine, but that means the engine is not operating in its optimal efficiency band, so again you want a tweaked engine which does the job you are asking it to do.
I will just add that a tweaked engine is just that, tweaked - it doesn't take all that much to take an engine intended for a thrust rating of 100K lb and tweak it to fit on an aircraft that needs a thrust rating of 95K lb, its not even the biggest job in hanging that engine off that new airframe.
explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here is the older engine mounted on a 747 in action https://youtu.be/4B3gwMONxDQ