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by chewkc65 on February 7th, 2008

chewkc65

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What are the technical difficulties in building aircraft engines powerful enough to enable the Airbus A380 to become a twin-jet? Would these difficulties include fuel economy and expensive upgrades to current airports?

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  • by Im Alec has abandoned this account on April 9th, 2008

    Im Alec has abandoned this account

    I would imagine the size would be a problem - small enough to fit under the wing and not scrape the ground. I cannot think of any direct engineering problems, I would not particularly see fuel economy or noise abatement as being more problems than they are. the main problems, I would think, would be financial. It would be such a large jump that the development costs would be huge. traditionally, engines have grow incrementally, so that the A380 engines (of which there are four) are only a bit larger than the B777 engines (of which there are two). Now you want to double the size of the largest engines in production. The cost of doing that would be huge. How many are you going to sell?

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  • by Fly Forever on April 12th, 2008

    Fly Forever

    One of the goals in building the A380 was efficiency. Meaning, the engineers wanted to design a super jumbo jet that was also cost effective and green. It is technically possible to build a large enough engine to make this happen. It would be considerably larger and would need to generate more pounds of thrust to compensate for the missing two engines. This defeats the real purpose of the aircraft - to be economical with a large payload. These large engines would burn as much or more than the four engines combined. They would also be quite expensive to build, making the cost of a new A380 even higher.

    When you start building jumbo sized aircraft, there comes a point where it is more efficient to have four smaller engines than two larger ones. Take for instance, three examples of aircraft:

    1) A340 - This is the only other four engine Airbus aircraft. It doesn't have the size of the A380 but trust me, it's big. It's generally used for ultra-long haul routes, usually encompassing over ten hours of flight and thousands of miles. In all flight stages, it became more efficient to run its four small engines instead of two large ones. They actually burn less fuel than a similar size engine.

    2) Boeing 747 - A classic plane, easily recognizeable not only by its four engines, but by the characteristic hump back design. The massive size of this jet makes four efficient engines much better than two giant guzzlers.

    3) Boeing 777 - Although this aircraft is a twin-jet, it has some of the largest jet engines of all commercial aircraft. This is a characteristic feature of this plane, the engines exceed both the 757 and 767 in size. This plane is right about on the border of efficiency in becoming either a large twin-jet or a medium sized quad-jet.

    Lastly, there also comes terms of safety. Two big engines on a large plane like the A380 may decrease safety. The controllability of the ailerons, behavior in bad conditions, and other factors are considered when determining what type of engine is best. Most important, what happens if an engine fails? If the A380 had only two engines, what happens if one fails? Can it still safely perform a go-around and return? With four engines on a plane that size, it is completely possible to lose one and maintain safe flight.

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  • by That Guy Again on April 9th, 2008

    That Guy Again

    Not being an engineer I would have to guess that the biggest obstacle would be starting from the ground up with gonzo cash and building something that would outperform the existing engines which make something like like 80,000 lbs of thrust that could still fit between the wing and the pavement and yet meet new noise abatement standards.

    I'm sure design constraints could pale to the monetary issue of getting such an engine certified.

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