- And we can move that
throttle to max power. (engine whines) (upbeat music) - Over 50,000 horsepower, that's massive. - Just be careful, Sam, the
leading edges are pretty sharp. - Test cell, which is a
building within a building. - Wow. - But we can do water ingestion testing. (engine whines) - Well, this is our DreamFix facility. - What went wrong with the Dreamliner? - A special Trent 1000 over here. - Wow, this is a very different one. - Once it's finished, this
will be the world's largest indoor testbed for experimental testing. - It's like a swimming pool. - Yeah, yeah, it's a bit, it
isn't actually a swimming pool. - I'm really impressed, but
this is really geared up for the future generation
of engine like the UltraFan. Welcome to Derby in the U.K. When you think about Rolls-Royce, you probably think about their cars, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Rolls-Royce Ghost. But for AvGeek like me and many
of you, we love aeroplanes , we know Rolls-Royce make
great aeroplane engine. Today we're going to take a look inside the Rolls-Royce engine factory. (upbeat music) This building's like, huge. Looking through what they done, to me, it's like rocket science. But here it's just production. Every 20 days a new engine get produced. - Welcome, Sam, to our
production test facility. This is where we start
to build the engines. So today we're going to look at
engine build for a XWB engine, which is the exclusive engine on the A350. (engines hum) (upbeat music) Start of the process really, here. We've got behind us a fan disc. So this is where the fan blades go. If you look over behind the fan disc you can see where the blades come in. So they're manufactured
and brought into here. So you've got fan blades, fan disc, and over on the table
here the annulus fillers, and they're the pieces
that go between the blades to make a nice, smooth finish for the air flowing into the engine. So this really is the start of the process for our XWB engine. Then what we've got here now
is we've brought the disc, the blades and the
annulus fillers together and formed the fan that goes
at the front of the engine, where the flow goes through the engine. And it's the fan that
produces the majority of the thrust for the engine. And this is an assembled
fan for an XWB engine. - Wow, look at this blade here. - Just be careful, Sam, the
leading edges are pretty sharp. - Pretty sharp? - And that's to get a really
efficient flow into the engine. We've just seen the fan at
the front of the engine. What we're looking at now
is a turbine and a shaft that goes at the back of the engine. Now, what this is is what drives the fan with a compressor end, so you tend to see turbine blades hidden
in this casing up here, and then a long shaft that goes through the middle of the engine
and drives the compressor or the fan at the front. So this is another module on build that comes together to
make our XWB engine. (upbeat music) What we've got here now is
the low-pressure turbine at the back of the engine. That's the start of the core build, so that's why at the back of the engine we've put that vertically
and gradually build that up in what we call a stack,
that's building the core. And then on the other side
of the shop, over here, we've got the fan being built. You saw the fan blades
being built nextdoor. This is the fan case, and
you can see lots of pipes and wires on the outside,
very complex build process. And you can see we use electronic models to direct the guys that
are building the engine. So they'll look on the screen, look at where the pipes
need to go, check that before they go and actually
put them on the engine. (upbeat music) So this is where we build
the core of the engine. So what we do there is we
start with the compressor at the bottom, build up to the combustor and then the turbines on the top. And as you can see, the different levels, where the guys that are
working on the engine need to be close to the
bit they're working on, so the floor moves as the
engine build progresses. (upbeat music) Behind me, the core
has finished build now. She is now ready to marry with the fans. You remember the fan and the
core are built separately? Here's the final core ready to go, we just need to join it to the fan. If you look behind me here, you can see the core has been flipped
to being from vertical to being horizontal, and the big fan case has been put on the front. - [Sam] Phil, what's this
machine's been doing, spinning around?
- Okay. Well, before we put the
fan blades in the fan case we need to make sure that the fan blades are a perfect fit to the fan case. We don't want a very big
gap between the fan case and the blades, so this
is just checking that and making sure that they're
going to fit perfectly together. - Behind the 22 giant fan blade
is the turbine blade inside. They can generate, each
of 'em, 800 horsepower, so together, 68 turbine blade generate over 50,000 horsepower, that's massive. This looks like the
engine's ready to roll. - Just 20 days from start to finish, and the engine's ready
to go across to test before it goes to our customer. So let's go over now and
look at our test facility. - Test facility, so the engine
go to test facility now? - That's right.
- Then let's go. - That's where we go next, let's go. (upbeat music) - Welcome to 58 Bed control room. Here is where the guys
take control of the engine, whether it's to gather data
or ensure build conformity. We take the engine, we rig
it to the test facility and we carry out the
customer's requirements, either to test it for maturity,
for different strains, pressures, temperatures,
we can do many things here in Derby in the test bed. This is basically the pilot takes control of the engine with the throttle, and we can move that
throttle to max power. (engine whines) And that will then put the
engine in a certain mode through the power range. We gather the data, we
write everything we do electronically and
record everything we do. And we also look at real-time
data in the control room to ensure we are getting
the customer's requirements. So we have a safety system
here in the test facility which allows us to make sure
that we have all the people and the personnel out of the test facility before we start work
and rotating the engine. So every single system has a lock on. Until all those locks are in place we cannot start the engine. It's an interlock system for safety. So here we are, entering
the the test cell, which is a building within a building, which makes the building extremely quiet when we run the engine. (upbeat music) This is the test cell now. So when we go through this door
we'll go into the test cell, and we'll be able to look
at the test facility. - Wow. (upbeat music) - This is where we do
different types of testing. We can do pass-off testing right before engines go to the customer, we can do research testing
or development testing. Some of them really exciting
and interesting tests that we don't do very often,
that we do in development, ready for certification,
could fan blade-off tests, where we blow a fan off and check that it's contained within the system. We could do a--
- Oh, you have to destroy it? - Destroy a blade to show--
- How they can sustain that. - To just prove that should
that happen in service, very unlikely that it would,
but we got to prove that that event is safe, so we do that. We can do water ingestion testing. (engine whines) We pour loads of water down
the front of the engine to simulate a storm and
flying through a storm, and show that the engine
performs correctly in that. We can do bird strike
testing, where we fire birds at the engine to simulate
what could happen if you were to hit a bird and show that the engine's strong
enough to take that. And we can also do what we
call cold-start testing, where we basically bring
a massive fridge in and put the engine in it. - Make it really cold.
- Overnight, make it really, really cold,
and then take the fridge away and prove that we can start
it cold, 'cause engines find it more difficult to start
in really cold conditions. So all kinds of really important testing that we can do on this cell in Derby. - All right. - So should we go now and
look at the preparation shop where we get the engines ready before they go on to the testbed? Okay, so we're entering our prep shop, our preparation shop,
where the engines come before they go on the testbed. Now, every engine that
we build here in Derby will come through here before it gets delivered to our customer. So relatively simple setup
checks that we do on the testbed, just to make sure
everything's working properly. Very similar to what you
might get with a car. So anytime we build a car,
before they deliver it to the car showroom they
just give it a quick drive, just to make sure everything's
functioning correctly. We put the white on the
front, which simulates, it's different to what
would go on in service, but it simulates the front of the engine. We connect it up to this
sort of carriage at the top which simulates the pylon, the bit that attaches the
engine to the aircraft. It's not exactly the same,
but it represents it. And then you can lots and
lots and lots of connections. So the data then comes from
the engine into the pylon, the pylon connects
together in the test cell, and all that data flows
back to those computers that we saw in the control rooms, so the engineers and the test engineers can understand how the
engine's performing. (upbeat music) - So Sam, this is our DreamFix facility which is a physical
representation, if you like, of the effort we're putting
into fix this problem we've got with the Trent 1000, and reduce the disruption
for our customers which we are really regretful of. At the moment we've got
about four engines in here which we're fixing quickly on a turn time to get them back out into the fleet. And you see around you,
about the activity in here to really start to get onto
this problem and crack it, embody all the fixes that we
know we've got designs for now. (upbeat music) - The Trent 1000 engine
is developed specially for 787 Dreamliners, but
somehow they suffer a problem. What went wrong with the Dreamliner on the Trent 1000 engine, Richard? - Well, we had three issues,
but I think the easiest way to try and understand
it is use a car analogy. Imagine you've got a car,
it's been proven safe for use, but you know that the tyres
will wear out at some point, you know that the windscreen wipers'll wear out at some point. Those things happen,
and you bring those in to fix them as and when they need. Two of our problems were like that. So we had an HP turbine and IP turbine that were wearing out slightly
earlier than expected, so you bring them in to replace
them earlier than expected. On top of that, and the
third problem which made it a bit trickier was we had
an IP compressor problem, which was not something that
you can monitor on condition. So it's not like wearing your tyres out or looking at your windscreen wipers. Imagine you had a problem with an oil pump that you had to bring in. If you bring that car in because the tyres you know have worn out,
you don't necessarily replace the wiper blades and
the oil pump at the same time. That's why it's take a while for us to flow all of these fixes in, just because you don't necessarily
fix everything at once. The engine's perfectly safe
and perfectly reliable, it's just that we're not
making it last as long as we and our customers would like it to. So that's the three
problems we're addressing. So imagine you're bringing in your tyres, we're putting new tyres
on, not necessarily changing the windscreen
wipers at the same time because they might still be good to go. Then you come in next time, you change the windscreen wipers,
your tyres are still fine. That's why it takes a long time, but we'll get there and
we'll fix this problem. It's all ready, the design
fixes are already in place. So Sam, we're in the DreamFix facility looking at Trent 1000s,
and we've actually got a special Trent 1000 over here that's got some of our newer technology for future engines on, which
I could like to show you if you want to walk this way. - Let's take a look. (upbeat music) Wow, this is a very different one. This one has blue turquoise
colour engine blade. It looks like carbon rim here, yeah. So what's the latest technology
breakthrough at Rolls-Royce? - So this is actually a test engine for our latest carbon/titanium
fan and containment system, which is the application
of carbon technology to reduce the weight of
the front of the engine, the fan and the fan case. It's running on a Trent 1000 donor engine, 'cause it happens to be the right size, but we're putting this
engine and the new system through its paces. This technology, it's taken a while for us to surpass our own
class-leading titanium blades. And that's fundamentally because
first and second generation carbon blades, while they
were good for weight, they weren't as good for air dynamics, whereas our titanium blades
that we saw in the Trent 1000, they're excellent for both. Now we've got a technology where, because of the 3D weave
of the carbon fibre, we can make a blade
that is both lightweight and aerodynamically efficient. So a system like this at this size would save about 750 pounds per engine, which is about, obviously
on a twin-engined aircraft, 1,500 pounds of weight
that you can really, either burn less fuel
or take more passengers. 'Cause what we'll also do
during certification testing is we'll put an explosive
bolt into the root here and explode that when the
engine's at full power, and then the engine has
to prove it can contain the kinetic energy of that blade. If one of these were to let
go under those circumstances, the amount of energy that
we're talking about containing would be similar to if
you take a BMW 3 Series and drive off a 100-foot cliff. That's the amount of energy
that this has to contain. And what we've got to prove
as the engine manufacturer is that, the engine doesn't necessarily have to continue running
and producing thrust, but it does have to make
sure that it runs down safely and no high-energy debris
penetrates the casing to go and harm the fuselage. So if one of these were to
happen while you are flying, then you might spill your gin and tonic but you'd be perfectly safe. (upbeat music) - So today we're changing
up to construction gear, because today we're going to see something under the construction. - We're here today at Bed 80. So once it's finished, this
will be the world's largest indoor testbed for experimental testings. This is where we actually push our engines to their ultimate limits
so we can understand how they really perform. So what we're doing now is really putting the intelligence into the building. We're fitting out the
systems which will allow us to control the engine,
but more importantly understand what the engine's doing. And we can actually read
up to 10,000 parameters on this bed, and we can
take that data real-time and we can actually stream
it back out to the cloud so that it can actually link real time to all our various models. So really exciting for us, it's not just a construction
project, you know? This is about testing for
the future for Rolls-Royce. We're now inside what
we call the prep shop. So this is where we
bring what essentially is a built experimental engine, but we're now bringing it in
here to get it ready for tests. So this is where we put
the engine on our pylon, so effectively we've made the engine think it's fitted to an aircraft. So that the reason for
the size of this building, is to allow us to actually
manoeuvre the engines and get them ready, and with UltraFan, clearly one of the largest
engines we've done, particularly in terms of its fan size. - That's huge. Yesterday I was in Testbed
58, I was really impressed. But this is really
geared up for the future generation of engine like the UltraFan. Much, much bigger and much,
much stronger capability. - That's correct, this is a lot bigger. But again, bigger for a reason. The UltraFan, the fan size
is significantly larger. We will be putting a
lot more slow-moving air through this testbed. So again, this is all about
getting a smooth flow of air into that engine, and we can do big. Absolutely, we can do UltraFan, and clearly we've designed
it to do a little bit more. But the important thing
is we can also do small in this bed, as well,
so we can also go down to much smaller engines. It will basically be able to
do every engine we make today, and every engine we're
intending to make in the future at this point in time. - It's like a swimming pool.
- Yeah, yeah. It's a bit, it isn't
actually a swimming pool. So what this is about, this is about we have a floor in here, and when we're testing,
the floor's down flat. But when we want to get to the engine, because it's raised to such a height, what this allows us to do is
we lift the entire floor up to the engine, and this allows
us to work on the engine while it's in the testbed, and then we lower it back down again. But yeah, absolutely, you can imagine people do come in thinking it's our pool. But yeah, no, it's a floor
which comes up and down. (upbeat music) We've moved from the test cell. We're now into the first
section of the tube, which is where we start to manage the air coming out of the engine. Anyone who's been at the airport, you know what the noise is like. And I think lots of people
probably have seen the videos on YouTube of the people
standing at the airport fences and seeing the power of
the engine as it takes off. (engines roar) Clearly, we need to make
sure that we do something about all that power, and
that's what this is doing. So this is about a
five-and-a-half-meter section tube, which has actually been
designed to allow us to slow that air down as it comes
out the back of the engine. Again, so by the time it
actually leaves the test cell, people won't even realise
the engine's running. This is effectively where the
air will leave the testbed. When we look at this we call it the basket for obvious reasons. So this is where the air,
it's come out of the engine, it's come through the big tube we've seen, it comes into here which
is an eight-meter section. And what we're doing here
is as the air is coming down it's hitting that, what does look like the front of an engine,
it's hitting that cone. But what that cone's then
doing is spreading the air out throughout this space,
and again the idea is we spread the air out,
we change its direction, we slow it down, and the
air can then all lift up. This testbed you know,
build a testbed like this probably every 10 to 15 years, so from an engineer's point
of view this really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So we've got people working on this who are very, very
excited, 'cause they know they're doing something for the future, future generations, and
they know they may not get the opportunity again in their
career, so really exciting. - Then your legacy would
last for a lifetime. - That's it, absolutely.
- Many more years to come, for such an engineering feat like this. - Yeah, absolutely. (air whooshing) (bell dings) (bubble pops)
Stay strong, hold and we can all fly first class all the way like Sam Chui lol
Awesome video. Thanks mate! Go RYCEY!!