Rolls-Royce runs first engine on its large, smart testbed

Rolls-Royce has successfully completed the first engine run on its state-of-the-art Testbed 80, which will be the largest and smartest indoor aerospace testbed in the world when it is officially opened in the coming months.

With an internal area of 7,500m², making it larger than a Premiership football [soccer] pitch, the testbed conducted its first run on a Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine at the test facility in Derby, UK. This is a major milestone in the project which has been under construction for almost three years and represents a $123 million investment.

Chris Cholerton, president, Rolls-Royce Civil Aerospace, said: “Today is an important landmark in our journey towards a more sustainable future for aerospace and aviation. Testbed 80 will not only test engines such as the Trent XWB – the world’s most efficient aero-engine in service – but also the engines and propulsion systems of the future, which will see us take another step toward decarbonization. It’s great that the first engine test has been a success and we are looking forward to the official opening of the facility in the coming months.”

Testbed 80 has been designed to test a range of today’s engines, including the Trent XWB and the Trent 1000, but will have the capability to test the UltraFan demonstrator, a blueprint for the next generation of even more efficient engines, as well as the hybrid or all-electric flight systems of the future. The versatility of the testbed means it can accommodate engines of all sizes up to 155klbf thrust – that’s enough power to launch a Boeing 747 with one (huge) engine.

Testbed 80 is equipped with a 140,000 L fuel tank (you could fill your car up almost 3,000 times with this amount of fuel) for different fuel types, including sustainable aviation fuel.

The data systems inside Testbed 80 are more capable and complex than any of the company’s existing testbeds, delivering data directly to secure storage, linked for the first time to analytical models and engineers. They can collect data from more than 10,000 different parameters on an engine, using an intricate web of sensors that detect even the tiniest vibrations at a rate of up to 200,000 samples per second. The data helps understand engines better, monitoring how every single component behaves in a range of conditions, and consequently providing crucial insights to inform future engine improvements for availability and efficiency.

The testbed is also home to a powerful X-ray machine that can capture 30 images per second and beam them directly to a secure cloud, where engineers around the world can analyze them along with the 10,000 other data parameters. Rolls Royce can X-ray engines while they are running to inspect engines to minute levels of detail.

Part of the new technology development for Testbed 80, specifically for the UltraFan, has been supported by the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI)’s PACE project.