General Electric It is one of the largest American companies in the world, which usually invests in all kinds of new technologies to achieve projects like the one that brings us together today. As the title of this post says, we will talk about the largest airplane engine that man has created to date.
To get to this point, the engineers and designers of General Electric Aviation have had to work for many years aided by complex platforms to design an engine like the one you see on the screen, the same that just a few days ago was successfully tested on a flight that lasted about four hours.
General Electric Aviation successfully tests its new Ge9X engine in a four-hour flight
Before continuing, let you know that despite how impressive the engine mounted on the plane that has been testing it looks, nothing less than a Boeing 747-400, an aircraft that may seem small if we look at the dimensions of the rest of the engines against which it has been tested, this has only been used for the moment for field tests since, as the US company itself has officially announced, the engine has been designed to be used by a completely new aircraft.
Despite the fact that the press release published by General Electric Aviation itself does not go into too much detail, the truth is that we can offer you a few data, at least, striking. An example of the enormous dimensions of this engine, to put it a bit in perspective, is that it has a diameter of no less than 3,4 meters, practically the diameter of a small passenger plane. The engine, in turn, is capable of generate more than 45.000 kilograms of thrust, enough to take care of moving, when the time comes and when they are ready, the new Boeing 777X.
Many have been the problems that General Electric Aviation engineers have had to face in the development of the Ge9X
As usually happens with a development of this magnitude, although we know that General Electric Aviation was working on the design and manufacture of an engine of these characteristics, the truth is that we did not know the degree of progress of the same, both for privacy as due to the fact that, as the company itself confirmed at the time, it has suffered various delays.
After overcoming all these inconveniences, the company's engineers have finally managed to carry out the first field test in the city of Victorville (California) being cataloged by the company itself as <strong>success</strong> since the Boeing 747 where it was mounted was able to stay in the air for a period of more than four hours. During these tests, the pilot had to perform different maneuvers in order to evaluate the engine's performance.
The engine is expected to be fully ready by early 2019
Once these tests have been carried out and their success has been published, the company has not hesitated to announce that the new engine will continue to be tested Ge9X over the next few months ensuring that, once the Boeing 777X has been designed and the manufacturing processes of the same have started, the engine is fully ready to be installed.
To get a real idea of the work to which it will be subjected, when the time comes, an engine like the one you see on the screen, we will delve a little into the specifications that we find on the Boeing 777X. Apparently when we talk about the new Boeing 777X, we do it on a plane that will have a capacity for 414 passengers or with a range of more than 14.000 kilometers. For this, General Electric Aviation has developed one of the most efficient engines of the moment, which must be fully ready for the first test flights that Boeing plans to carry out in early 2019.