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The GE BRIEF — January 28, 2020

January 28, 2020

GE Brief logo

January 28, 2020


 

 

FIRST IN FLIGHT


The skies over Everett, Washington, may have been cloudy, but at Paine Field the mood was positively radiant on Saturday morning as onlookers gathered for the first glimpse of a new giant of aviation: the Boeing 777X. It was the inaugural test flight of the plane maker’s latest product, a wide-body passenger jet that’s the world’s largest and longest twin-engine airliner. Oh, and those twin engines? They’re a big deal too. The 777X is powered by the GE9X engine, the largest and most powerful commercial jet engine ever built. On Saturday, the pilots in the cockpit of the plane’s first flight had engines on each wing capable of providing 134,300 pounds of thrust — a certified world record.

Cleared for takeoff: “Today’s massive milestone is a testament to the outstanding work and dedication of both companies,” said David Joyce, president and CEO of GE Aviation. “We are proud to be the power under the wings of the 777X and provide this state-of-the-art aircraft with GE’s advanced technology.” That includes cutting-edge materials like ceramic matrix composites and manufacturing methods like 3D printing, which come together to make the GE9X the most fuel-efficient engine in its class that GE has ever made.

It's not just technological sophistication the GE9X engine represents — it’s people power, too. Click here for more on the maiden flight of the 777X, and read on to learn about some of the remarkable engineers and aviators behind this achievement.

 

 

 

 

 

JET BOOSTER


Growing up, Ted Ingling wanted to be a car mechanic. He ended up settling for jet engines, though, and today — as general manager of the GE9X engine program — he works on machines a bit more complicated than your average four-door sedan. Also, bigger: At more than 11 feet in diameter, the GE9X is as wide as the fuselage of an entire single-aisle jet. And though it involves new materials and manufacturing techniques, the machine is “rooted in a fifth generation of engine architecture,” said Ingling, who should know: He’s been in the jet engine business for 30 years.

Roots of a giant: On Saturday, Ingling celebrated an important milestone. “The flight test program of the Boeing 777X with the GE9X will validate the performance objectives and advantages of this airplane and engine combination,” he said. Not long ago, Ingling gave GE Reports a peek into the design and construction of the world’s largest engine, including those lightweight, heat-resistant ceramic matrix composites — a material it took GE three decades to develop, and which help contribute to the engine’s efficiency. “The technologies I’ve worked on are out of this world,” Ingling said. “I never have a dull moment.”

Ingling explains some of the science and tech behind the GE9X here.

 

 

 

 

 

GENERATION 3D


The efficiency of the GE9X engine is thanks to advanced materials and manufacturing methods — and to engineers like Stefka Petkova, part of the GE Aviation team that developed the engine. Petkova, who joined GE as a college intern, is based in Ohio at GE’s Additive Technology Center, where hundreds of engineers, designers and workers from GE Aviation and GE Additive dream up the machine parts of tomorrow using technologies collectively known as additive manufacturing, or 3D printing.

The next dimension: With 3D printing, engineers can design parts to optimum shapes on computers, then use lasers or electron beams to build those shapes out of fine layers of metal powder. The GE9X engine combines more than 300 engine parts into just seven 3D-printed components. Antroine Townes, ATC site leader, said, “In the past, designers were trapped by the manufacturing methods available to them. Now you can take those limitations away and design the best thing for the engine, not the best thing for manufacturing.”

Learn more here about 3D printing and jet engines — and the young engineers putting the two together.

 

 

 

 

 

THE RIGHT STUFF


By the time it hit the skies over Seattle, the GE9X engine had already been through 72 test flights, totaling more than 400 hours, in Victorville, California — home of GE’s 747-400 flying testbed and the workplace of Jon Ohman, GE’s chief test pilot. Growing up, Ohman knew he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who first broke the speed of sound. Yeager and his contemporaries “established what it means to be a test pilot,” Ohman said. “They were pushing the boundaries of what humans were doing in the air.” After stints in the Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan, then as a military test pilot, Ohman landed at GE.

Trial by flyer: Ohman flies with 15 to 20 flight engineers and plenty of computers inside their flying testbed. The people and tech can measure and modify various engine parameters in flight. Before the 747-400 ever takes off, Ohman and his crew go through an elaborate process that involves ground tests, simulations and various other prep work. “It was certainly exciting to be the first person to fly the largest engine in the world, to be part of an aviation first,” Ohman says. “But it’s a really humbling experience, too.”

Learn more about Jon Ohman’s high-flying career here.

 

 

 

 

 

GRAMMY DEAREST


Thomas Edison lost much of his hearing when he was still a child. “I have not heard a bird sing since I was 12 years old,” he once remarked. But that didn’t stop the Wizard of Menlo Park — and the founding father of General Electric — from inventing the phonograph, a device that for the first time recorded sounds and played them back. Edison was just 29 years old at the time, and it was 1877. He hadn’t even gotten around to the light bulb yet.

Light bulb moment: The phonograph created a whole new way of experiencing the world through sound, and — as importantly — set into motion a chain of historical events that would one day lead to the creation of Billie Eilish’s “Everything I Wanted.” In 1958, when the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was thinking about naming its music industry awards, one suggestion was the Eddie — to honor Edison’s contribution. The Academy eventually decided on Grammy, after the gramophone. This past Sunday night, the Grammy Awards marked their 62nd year.

Learn more here about Edison’s foundational role in the music industry.

 

 

 

 

 

COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?


1. Scientist With Some Nerve

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh designed a biodegradable polymer tube to help nerves regrow in injured patients.

 

2. Say Ahhhhhh

In the U.K., a team of engineers and archaeologists created a “Vocal Tract Organ” that reproduces a “vowel-like sound” that would’ve been made by an Egyptian priest who was mummified 3,000 years ago.

 

3. Seeing Red

Scientists at Ontario’s McMaster University designed “super-human red blood cells” to target infections or diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.

 

Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

— QUOTE OF THE DAY — 


 

“It’s not hard to walk into this building every morning and go to work. A lot of the things we do here, we are doing for the very first time.”

Eric Gatlin, additive manufacturing general manager for GE Aviation

 

 

 

 

 

Quote: GE Reports. Image credit: Ted Ingling.

 

 

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