Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
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Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#2It's more than just fan blade failure. Engines are tested against fan blade failures. The surrounding cowling should contain it.
In this case the whole fan disk is gone. Uncontained failure like this can down the plane depending on the where the parts fly.
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#3It's more than just fan blade failure. Engines are tested against fan blade failures. The surrounding cowling should contain it. In this case the whole fan disk is gone. Uncontained failure like this can down the plane depending on the where the parts fly.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32 ... although that happened both in a different part of the engine (the hot bit) and that was a Rolls Royce engine whereas this is an Engine Alliance (GE/P&W) GP7270 engine.
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#4Seriously lucky that the disintegration didn't take out vital hydraulics or fuel systems in the wing, or penetrate the pressurised fuselage.
I'd like to hope that this wasn't caused by ground crew error, i.e. an improperly secured cowling or access hatch, which snowballed into major component failure...
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#5Sounds like it was over water, meaning they won't be able to retrieve the fan to determine why it failed.
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#6Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#7It's more than just fan blade failure. Engines are tested against fan blade failures. The surrounding cowling should contain it. In this case the whole fan disk is gone. Uncontained failure like this can down the plane depending on the where the parts fly.
For what a failing fan disk can do:
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#8Seriously lucky that the disintegration didn't take out vital hydraulics or fuel systems in the wing, or penetrate the pressurised fuselage. I'd like to hope that this wasn't caused by ground crew error, i.e. an improperly secured cowling or access hatch, which snowballed into major component failure...
The A380 has two hydraulic systems. If the priamry fails, the aircraft is still fully flyable. Some extra things like slats don't work anymore but those aren't critical for flight and landing. If the secondary hydraulics fail, there are still extra electric actuators to move the control surfaces.
Source: http://www.roger-wilco.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Untitl...
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#9This screams of poor servicing.
Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated
#10Seriously lucky that the disintegration didn't take out vital hydraulics or fuel systems in the wing, or penetrate the pressurised fuselage. I'd like to hope that this wasn't caused by ground crew error, i.e. an improperly secured cowling or access hatch, which snowballed into major component failure...
The A380 has two hydraulic systems. If the priamry fails, the aircraft is still fully flyable. Some extra things like slats don't work anymore but those aren't critical for flight and landing. If the secondary hydraulics fail, there are still extra electric actuators to move the control surfaces. Source: http://www.roger-wilco.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Untitl...
I mean, primary and backup hydraulics are hopelessly intertwined on this systems diagram, certainly physically. Not sure how much that is going to help against parts flying into it.
Which is of course what happened in that linked incident below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
The three hydraulic systems were separate, so that failure of any one of them would leave the crew with full control, but lines for all three systems shared the same narrow passage through the tail where the engine debris had penetrated, and thus control surfaces were inoperative.