Et nous avions déjà quelques incides puisque notre membre Sevrien connait très bien quelques personnes chez RR.
R-R ready to bench test upgraded Trent 1000
By Andrew Doyle
Rolls-Royce expects this month to begin bench-testing the first improved variant of the Trent 1000 for the Boeing 787 aimed at bringing the turbofan's specific fuel consumption to "within 1%" of its target.
The upgrade package, which includes a modified low-pressure turbine design, should be flight-tested on the 787
starting in the fourth quarter of this year, although the new standard
will not be available for in-service aircraft until after "up to five"
787-8s have been delivered to launch operator All Nippon Airways, says
R-R director of Boeing programmes Chris Cholerton.
"The improvement comes along very shortly after [service entry] and
we will then roll those early engines out and replace them with the
improved standard," says Cholerton. The upgrade is expected to deliver
a "1-2%" SFC improvement compared with the version of the Trent 1000
that will launch the 787 into its long-awaited flight test programme,
due to begin later this month.
work to do, but we'll be within 1%," says Cholerton. "We get to spec,
if not beyond, with the 787-9, and the confidence for that has come
from a demonstrator we've already run this year."
The first iteration of the Trent 1000 has missed its performance
targets primarily due to efficiency shortfalls in the low-pressure
turbine, and the revised design incorporates a few additional blades.
"The key area was the LP turbine in pushing those high-lift
aerodynamics for the benefit of weight. We pushed a little bit too far
so that the LP turbine wasn't performing as we wanted it to. There were
some flow separations at the tip which was losing performance," says
Cholerton.
Looking further ahead, R-R plans to feed back technology being developed for the A350's Trent XWB back into the Trent 1000.
"We've got some further work we want to do in the next year and a
half on turbine case cooling/turbine tip clearance control," says Trent
1000 chief engineer Andy Geer. "That's being designed and developed for
the XWB now, taking into account some of the lessons we learned during
our own development process. They will productionise it and pretty much
the same design will be read back to the Trent 1000."
The improved turbine case cooling technology is expected to be
available in time for the service entry of the stretched 787-9 with Air New Zealand
in 2013. R-R says it bench-tested a Trent 1000 demonstrator engine in
February incorporating several modifications that ran "half a percent
better than specification", although some of these upgrades will not be
available for production Trent 1000s for up to four years.
"That's not where we'll be when we enter service, but it gives us
great confidence that what we're doing for the service entry standard
is robust," says Cholerton.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/06/03/327329/r-r-ready-to-bench-test-upgraded-trent-1000.html