Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 02:35
Sure, I understand that, however correct me if Im wrong but items such as the shaft spool sections and blades etc are only replaced if ultrasonic/xray etc testing shows it to be needed?
And 4000 cycles is the equivalent of driving your car to and from work for 8 years
"Fuel up a 330 or 747 and watch at least 70,000 tonne of juice go in :-0 "
probably should be 70,000 litres!!? And that will likely take a 400 tonne 747 6000+
miles.
Still, some quick arithmatic tells me that 4000 cycles, taken, say, on a jumbo on a shorthaul route as in japan with absolute minimum 1 hour would be absolutely minimum 4000 hours between rebuilds? 4000 hours in ya car at 100 kmh is 400,000 km between full rebuilds. And I would guess that very very few jumbos would average 1 hour turnarounds?
Who would put their life on a 3.0litre Nissan motor at 400,000 or even 300,000 km? or even (god forbid!!) a Toyota motor? Imagine if every Nissan 3 litre that blew up was a 747 with 400 passengers on board? Boeing (Rolls Royce or Pratt and Whitney) would have a fair old warranty claim going then?
However I digress, I think the rough statistics show that gas turbines ARE quite reliable in design??
Forgive me, Bradley if I have taken liberties with my guesswork figures, and feel free to correct any inaccurracies!!
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