Engine Directory

Rolls-Royce Aerospace

Rolls-Royce's civil aerospace division secured orders for 408 Trent powerplants in 2008, helping underlying revenues to rise 11% to £4.5 billion ($6.4 billion). The company delivered a total of 987 engines during the year, up from 851 in 2007. Underlying profit before financing increased slightly to £566 million. But the Derby, UK-based engine maker warns that airframe delays and concerns over customer financing, alongside uncertainty over engine volumes, mean that the impact of the economic downturn is 'unclear'. The company expects engine deliveries to fall in 2009 and says there is an 'increasing risk of deferrals and cancellation'. It says Trent deliveries will be stable but is expecting weaker volumes in the narrowbody, regional and corporate sectors. The International Aero Engines venture 'performed strongly' in 2008, with 351 of its V2500 powerplants delivered and orders for more than 600 taken. The outlook for the Trent XWB engine – still the only engine option for the Airbus A350 XWB - was seen as 'positive' with confirmed orders for engines to power 400 aircraft.

Underlying services revenues for civil aerospace were up 6.7% to £2.7 billion, and account for over 60% of the division's sales. Service revenue growth in 2009 is expected to be 'modest', held back by lower utilisation and parked aircraft. Overall, Rolls-Royce expects underlying profits, as a result, to be lower in 2009.

When the company issued its interim results for 2008 in July 2008, these showed a civil aerospace order book which was up 17 % on the previous year. At the time of the release, fuel prices had just reached an all-time high. While the world’s second largest maker of aero engines cannot completely isolate itself from the effects of oil price fluctuations, financing constraints and the global slow down; the company identified at that time several factors that helped it to mitigate these effects, as follows:

• The youth and fuel efficiency of the Rolls-Royce-powered fleet.

• The resilience of the widebody and corporate sectors.

• The scale and geographical diversity of the installed base and order book.

It seems likely that the extent of this mitigation has, if anything been reduced in the intervening period.

Civil aerospace is R-R’s biggest business in the OEM sector, making up over 20% of total sales. Rolls-Royce offers the broadest range of products across the entire civil aerospace engine market, ranging from long and medium range airliners to regional and general aviation to the corporate sector. Rolls-Royce claims a 47% share of the market to power new-generation widebody aircraft, including the Airbus A350 XWB and Boeing 787 and 777. The majority of new commercial customers continue to select the company's TotalCare engine services. The current engine model line up comprises:

Long and medium-range airliners:

The Trent family was developed from the RB211 family of high-bypass, three-shaft turbofans, which produced 37,400- 60,600lb (166-270kN) thrust to power the Lockheed TriStar, Boeing 747, 757 and Tupolev Tu-204.

Trent XWB: Rolls-Royce's offering to power the A350-800 and -900 in the 250 to 300-seater class addresses a market opportunity expected to be worth $186 billion over the next twenty years. Orders already taken cover over 700 engines, as the XWB builds on the market leading position of the Trent 700 on the Airbus A330. The Trent XWB will also power the larger A350-1000 in the 350-seat market, as well as future freighter and long-range versions of the aircraft, providing a single engine type across the aircraft family. The Trent XWB is derived from the Trent 1000, retaining the contra-rotating high-pressure system introduced on the Trent 900, which brings higher efficiency and has fewer parts. At the 2007 Paris air show, Rolls-Royce sealed its biggest ever contract when Qatar Airways placed an order for Trent XWBs to power a fleet of 80 Airbus A350 XWBs. At the Dubai air show in November 2007 Emirates placed an order for Trent XWBs to power 50 A350-900s and 20 A350-1000s, and took options on 50 more aircraft. As at 31 December 2008 Trent XWB orders totalled 438. Ground testing is scheduled for 2010, certification for 2011, maiden flight for 2012 and entry into service for 2013.

Trent 1000: the launch engine for the 787 Dreamliner, certificated at 53,000-75,000lb (236-334kN) and capable of the thrust specified for the 787 aircraft family. The Trent 1000 will be the first engine to power the 787 in flight test, and in service. As at early 2009, fifteen airlines, including All Nippon Airways, British Airways and LAN Airlines and four lessors have placed orders for over 260 Trent-powered 787s.

Trent 900: powers the Airbus A380. Rated at 70,000-6,000lb (311-338kN) and capable of achieving 84,000lb (374kN). Certificated on time in October 2004. Already in service with Singapore Airlines, Qantas and selected by British Airways.

Trent 800: producing thrust ratings from 75,000- 95,000lb (334-423kN), fitted to the 777-200, 777-200ER, and 777-300.

Trent 700: market leading powerplant on the A330 with a market share of 41%. Rated at 67,500-71,000lb (300-316kN).

Trent 500: featuring the same wide-chord fan from the Trent 700 and a scaled down Trent 800 engine core. Certificated at 60,000lb (267kN) for the A340-600HGW and de-rated to 53,000lb (236kN) for the A340-500 and 56,000lb for the A340-500HGW.

Medium- and short-range airliners:

Rolls-Royce currently addresses this market through its participation in the International Aero Engines (IAE) consortium to produce the V2500 turbofan to power the Airbus A320, A319 and A321 family, which are rated at 23,500-35,000 lb (105-147 kN).

Regional Jets:

AE3007: the 9,000lb-thrust turbofan powers the Embraer ERJ-145 family. It shares a common core with the AE1107 and AE2100, both derived from the Allison T406 turboshaft. R-R claims the AE3007 powers 40% of regional jet airliners.

BR700: a family of three engines, the BR710, 715 and 725 producing 14,750-17.000lb (66-76 kN) developed in conjunction with BMW in what is now Rolls-Royce Deutschland. The BR715 powers the Boeing 717. The BR725, selected for the Gulfstream G650, addresses a market opportunity expected to be worth $14 billion over the next 20 years.

Tay: developed in the early 1970s from the Spey to produce 13,850- 15,400lb (61.6-68.5kN) thrust to power the Fokker 70, 100 and refanned Boeing 727s.

Turboprops:

Powerplants for the civil market are built in the USA by the Rolls Royce Corporation, the former Allison, which was acquired in 1994. The turboprop portfolio spans 420-6,100 shp..

AE2100: the 4,160-6,100shp (3,100-4,545kW) turboprop. Powers the Saab 2000.

250: Producing 420-715shp (314-534 kW). More than 1200 Model 250 turboprops have been produced to date.

RR500 Turboprop: Launched on 29 July 2008, is a new multi-fuel capable engine for light single and twin engine aircraft, offering 350-450 SHP (257-331 kW). Turboshafts:

Model 250 Turboshaft: Accounts for by far the largest number of sales, with over 30,000 delivered for civil and military applications in a production run which spans more than 40 years. This has been achieved through continuous development. The 250 Series IV turboshaft family offers full authority digital engine control (FADEC) in the Model 250-C30/C40/C47), which spans 650-715shp (485-534 kW) to power the Bell 407/430/206L and MDH MD530/600N helicopters.

RR300 Turboshaft: Being developed in both turboprop and turboshaft forms as an affordable replacement for piston engines in light helicopters and fixed wing general aviation aircraft. The RR300 is optimised for performance in the 240-300 shp (175-221 kW) power range.

RR500: A scaled-up version of the RR300 producing 475 shp (355 kW)) was announced at Heli-expo in February 2009. The RR500 is being developed as a successor to the existing Model 250 family of turboshafts.

RTM 322: Developed and produced by Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Ltd, a joint subsidiary company. Powers the AW 101 Merlin, WAH-64D Longbow Apache and NH90 military helicopters. Initially designed to deliver 1,566 kW 2,100 shp (1,545 kW) at takeoff, the RTM 322 offers growth potential to 3,300 shp (2,430 kW). . Well over 500 have been delivered since deliveries began in October 2002. The RTM 322 has been chosen to power the NH90s flown by twelve of fourteen customer nations. In February 2009 the RTM 322 was selected to power the Eurocopter X3 high speed helicopter technology demonstrator. After care:

The growth and importance of the service sector to Rolls-Royce is illustrated by the fact that TotalCare, the pioneering power-by-the-hour long-term product support package introduced by Rolls-Royce for airlines, has grown from covering just 2% of the company's installed fleet at the turn of the decade to over half today.

The future:

In contrast to IAE partner Pratt & Whitney, which is staking its commercial engine future on the GTF geared turbofan, Rolls-Royce is so far keeping its options open and is continuing to explore several projects for potential future application. These include the RB285, an advanced three-shaft engine that could rival the CFM International LEAP-X and Pratt & Whitney PW1000G GTF in the battle to power the next generation of narrowbody airliner families from Airbus and Boeing late in the next decade. The company is evaluating the RB285 against the two-spool RB282, as selected to power Dassault’s SMS super mid-sized business jet. The RB282 and RB285 would form the basis of RR's 'Option 15-20’ offering, should Airbus and Boeing reject open rotor concepts in favour of advanced turbofans, by providing a 15-20% efficiency improvement. Under its five-year UK-funded Environmentally Friendly Engine (EFE) research programme, launched in 2006, the company is exploring technologies which will improve environmental performance using a Trent 1000 powerplant, which is expected to run for the first time later this year (2009). The EFE will aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 10% and NOx emissions by 60% using a range of technologies including lean-burn combustors. The company believes that lessons learned could yet benefit the Trent XWB programme. It will also provide the opportunity to validate other technologies to address other customer requirements such as the use of high temperature materials. Rolls-Royce has also been investigating whether new and innovative technologies could make the open rotor engine a quiet and efficient reality and believes that future open-rotor powered aircraft could save around $3 million and 10,000t of carbon dioxide a year per aircraft. When oil prices were reaching their all-time high in the second half of 2008 the company was also considering the prospects for a new generation of turboprop-powered aircraft to replace a substantial proportion of today's narrowbody jets.

In May 2009 Rolls-Royce announced that its facilities in the UK and Germany would be providing propulsion design expertise to a joint collaborative research programme with Boeing, RUAG Aerospace and Deharde Maschinenbau. The project will explore the potential of fuel-efficient open-rotor propulsion technology for future commercial aircraft. Drawing on each partner’s technologies and techniques, the aim is to test a model concept airplane with open-rotor engines early in 2010. The tests will take place at RUAG's Low Speed Wind Tunnel in Emmen, Switzerland, and will draw on the Swiss company's expertise in counter-rotating open rotor engine simulation. Boeing is to design the integrated wind tunnel model airframe, which will be manufactured by Deharde Maschinenbau in Varel, Germany. <

To amend, update or comment on this profile, contact Ian Joyce at: ian.joyce@flightglobal.com.