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Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

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Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#81

Post by gambiting »

likestowatch wrote: post #80
exceptione wrote: post #29

> The detailed software allowed them to enter various parameters including the weather, runway condition, and any systems failures, and then calculate whether it was possible to land. But when everything had been entered, the program spit out an unhelpful answer: “no result.” > When calculating the landing distance, the software applied a generic “operational coefficient” to account conservatively for variations in p…

well airbus does hire in morocco inb4 you are racis Im moroccan I personally know a guy who faked his entire university record (dad is a local politician) and is now working at engine systems at airbus in france he does have a winning smile though europe is not ready to deal with third world achievement dynamics

The "son of a politician takes a high level engineering position" story happens everywhere. If airbus has a strict hiring process I don't see any issue here. It's the same as people saying programmers from India are bad - I have worked with some incredibly skilled Indian programmers, literally top tier people(educated and living in India too, not immigrants educated elsewhere). You have all kinds everywhere, it's just what standard you want to set.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#82

Post by bell-cot »

gambiting wrote: post #70
mcapodici wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worse than even that: > Within the space of four seconds, the energy from the annulus gas flow accelerated the IP turbine past its critical speed, until centrifugal forces exceeded the ultimate strength of the nickel alloy disk. The red-hot, wildly spinning disk instantly fractured into several sections, which rocketed outward in multiple directions at incomprehensible speed.

The fact that it's assumed to have infinite energy when planning for this is crazy. Engineers saying yeah there is no material in the world that can stop it.

Infinite is a bit poetic there. For large enough n, n inches of (say) armor steel could stop it. But that suggestion got Sales talking about "commercially viability", and Finance sided with them, and we all know how that story goes.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#83

Post by bell-cot »

exceptione wrote: post #29

> The detailed software allowed them to enter various parameters including the weather, runway condition, and any systems failures, and then calculate whether it was possible to land. But when everything had been entered, the program spit out an unhelpful answer: “no result.” > When calculating the landing distance, the software applied a generic “operational coefficient” to account conservatively for variations in p…

The A380 was designed >20 years ago, in the heavily regulated and safety-obsessed commercial aviation industry.

Any reason for assuming that your preferred solution would have been an available and comfortable option for the Airbus' lead engineers back then?

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#84

Post by WJW »

bell-cot wrote: post #82
gambiting wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it's assumed to have infinite energy when planning for this is crazy. Engineers saying yeah there is no material in the world that can stop it.

Infinite is a bit poetic there. For large enough n, n inches of (say) armor steel could stop it. But that suggestion got Sales talking about "commercially viability", and Finance sided with them, and we all know how that story goes.

It's not (purely) the sales and finance people, planes need to be able to get off the ground to be useful at all. I doubt even an A380 would still be able to lift off if you strap a dozen inches of armor plating to every part of the plane that could possibly be reached by shrapnel.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#85

Post by j4k0bfr »

sam1714 wrote: post #21
realo wrote: post #14

Catastrophic failure? Check Plane landed without casualties? Check Plane design so good it helped avoid casualties? Check Hum... Ah! Not an american Boeing but a french Airbus. Of course. The article mentions this story should make everyone a little less afraid of flying. Sure, as long as its not on a Boeing plane.

Like Boeing, there was organizational dysfunction leading to a direct safety issue. During the development of the A380, the German and French sides were using different versions of the CATIA PLM software (i.e. CAD), which prevented people from looking at a single unified model of the plane. One concrete problem it caused was major problems with the wiring harnesses, which led to a 2 year delay in the program, and 3 e…

Thanks for mentioning the A380 CAD snafu, it made me rewatch one of my favourite clips [0].

The guy taking his hat off makes me burst into nervous giggles every time lol.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1k80h9j/...

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#86

Post by cucumber3732842 »

gambiting wrote: post #70
mcapodici wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worse than even that: > Within the space of four seconds, the energy from the annulus gas flow accelerated the IP turbine past its critical speed, until centrifugal forces exceeded the ultimate strength of the nickel alloy disk. The red-hot, wildly spinning disk instantly fractured into several sections, which rocketed outward in multiple directions at incomprehensible speed.

The fact that it's assumed to have infinite energy when planning for this is crazy. Engineers saying yeah there is no material in the world that can stop it.

I know we all like to hand wring about stuff like this but realistically it's "infinite" to prevent the same genius textbook engineers who cooked up the VMC procedure and the CMM procedure from cooking up equally half baked "with a plate of this thickness at this angle it will remove X energy from anything that penetrates it therefore we are good to put some super critical thing right in it's path" solution.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#87

Post by exceptione »

bell-cot wrote: post #83
exceptione wrote: post #29

> The detailed software allowed them to enter various parameters including the weather, runway condition, and any systems failures, and then calculate whether it was possible to land. But when everything had been entered, the program spit out an unhelpful answer: “no result.” > When calculating the landing distance, the software applied a generic “operational coefficient” to account conservatively for variations in p…

The A380 was designed >20 years ago, in the heavily regulated and safety-obsessed commercial aviation industry. Any reason for assuming that your preferred solution would have been an available and comfortable option for the Airbus' lead engineers back then?

One reason is that this is mostly a brain firmware phenomenon. My personal observation is that some people are able to nail a domain with good conceptual integrity, but there are also many (clever) people that quickly reach to a mechanical implementation, often even unable to think on a conceptual level about the problem domain. Languages with proper sum types are really helpful here, but Haskell was 20 years ago already 16 years old.

Nonetheless, the language is not the real impediment, it is the way of approaching a problem. Also, the software we are talking about was a standalone application installed on laptops, they were not part of the airplane's board computer.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#88

Post by exceptione »

gambiting wrote: post #81
likestowatch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well airbus does hire in morocco inb4 you are racis Im moroccan I personally know a guy who faked his entire university record (dad is a local politician) and is now working at engine systems at airbus in france he does have a winning smile though europe is not ready to deal with third world achievement dynamics

The "son of a politician takes a high level engineering position" story happens everywhere. If airbus has a strict hiring process I don't see any issue here. It's the same as people saying programmers from India are bad - I have worked with some incredibly skilled Indian programmers, literally top tier people(educated and living in India too, not immigrants educated elsewhere). You have all kinds everywhere, it's jus…

Morocco is notorious for its nepotism though. The run on Ceutta can't be unseen from the problem that for many young Moroccans pursuing an education is almost useless, as the opportunities are exclusively for the political elite. A whole generation does not see any future for themselves in their own country, which is very sad from my pov.

In India, afaik, a well-educated Indian has fairer chances. I don't know how much the current unemployment situation is playing out though.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#89

Post by bell-cot »

WJW wrote: post #84
bell-cot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infinite is a bit poetic there. For large enough n, n inches of (say) armor steel could stop it. But that suggestion got Sales talking about "commercially viability", and Finance sided with them, and we all know how that story goes.

It's not (purely) the sales and finance people, planes need to be able to get off the ground to be useful at all. I doubt even an A380 would still be able to lift off if you strap a dozen inches of armor plating to every part of the plane that could possibly be reached by shrapnel.

You'd put the containment armor directly around the engine. It wouldn't take dozens of inches. Whether you use Newton's rule of thumb (penetration ends when the mass of armor displaced equals the mass of the shell that hit it) or more modern rules - a failing turbine disk is neither a precision-engineered anti-armor weapon, nor a heavy battleship shell.

I'd bet the plane would still be able to take off, if it made it that far. But it never would - with the extra weight guaranteeing that no airline would buy it, Finance would never sign off on funding to even complete the design work.

(Yes, the reality behind my quips about Sales and Finance is more complex:)

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#90

Post by xattt »

shellfishgene wrote: post #79
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #3

Turbine disk failure is one thing that can down a plane, and you can only reduce the probability so much. Fan blades and turbine blades can be contained by containment cases if they break off, but turbine disks can't. When a disk breaks, it's an uncontained engine failure. A 20 kg disk fragment flying at Mach 1 goes through everything. Airframes are have a 30-degree fragment spread cone around every disk stage. Airfr…

I like to sit away from the wings to have a better view out the window, but not sitting in the fragment spread cone is probably also a good idea ;)

Could either marketed as a discount seats or “excitement seats”.
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