Rolls-Royce has revealed plans to build on its share of the Chinese market after the first Airbus A350 aircraft powered by its Derby-built Trent XWB engine landed in the country. Sichuan Airlines has ordered an Airbus 350 and will start using the aircraft later this month (August).
China is the world’s second-largest civil aviation market and Rolls-Royce says it presents ‘tremendous opportunities”. The Derby manufacturing giant powers over half of the region’s wide body fleet, with 20% of Trent engine orders coming from Chinese operators.
The Trent XWB in numbers
-It sucks in upto 1.3 tonnes of air, the equivalent of a squash court, every second at take-off.
-The force on a fan blade at take-off is equivalent to a load of almost 90 tons, the same as nine London buses hanging off each blade.
-High pressure turbine blades inside the engine rotate at 12,500 rpm, with their tips reaching 1,200mph – twice the speed of sound.
-At take off each of the engine’s high pressure turbine blades generates around 900 horsepower per blade – the equivalent to that of a Formula One racing car.
-At full power, air leaves the nozzle at the back of the engine travelling at almost 1000mph
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Airbus has significantly sped up product development by working with Dassault Systemes and the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University at the 3DEXPERIENCE Centre Wichita. As we enter the second century of powered flight, there is an explosion of new innovation. Everywhere you look, new innovations are disrupting the aerospace market.
Autonomous flying vehicles will help issues around urban mobility. The commercialisation if space will reignite our exploration of space. Drones may deliver packages to our front door. Everywhere you look, new innovations are disrupting the aerospace market.
These waves of innovation are part of a new industrial renaissance with the rise of new technologies creating new ways of living, working, interacting, innovating and business models in the 21st century. The lines are blurring between virtual and real world. Augmented and virtual reality allow groups scattered across the globe to work together as if they are in the same room. Dynamic simulation allows teams to run complex tests virtually saving hundreds of hours and thousands in costs. This industry renaissance can transform the people, processes and solutions companies need to be the market leaders of the future.
Not a futuristic concept, Airbus recently developed a new way of working to speed up product working for Aviation Research at the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University at the 3DEXPERIENCE Centre Wichita, the aerospace giant chose a project that could not only revolutionise a critical aircraft component tor its business and that of Its competitors, but also change the speed of Airbus product innovation.
Airbus sought to develop a prototype of a thrust reverser unit (TRU), a component that slows down an aircraft upon landing. It wanted to simplify the design and improve its efficiency in record time. While this type of development project would normally take 18-24 months, Airbus set a goal to complete the work in a focused 90-day “sprint.’
Opened in 2017, the 3DEXPERIENCE Centre on the WSU Innovation campus served as the hub for the development work leveraging Dassault Systemes 3DEXPERIENCE Diatform® to connect more than 30 people across 22 organisations across the globe.
Leveraging the Centre allowed the team to take advantage of its unique capabilities Including: one of the world’s largest flex caves; a cutting-edge Multi-Robotics Advanced Manufacturing (MKAM) cell; and robust additive manufacturing and reverse engineering capabilities. Trained on using the full capabilities of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for three weeks, the team and multiple and suppliers worked concurrently to deliver the project in just 12 weeks.