Project 1: Tighter Specification Aerofoils

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The Tighter Specification Aerofoils Project aimed to develop new manufacturing processes that enable cost competitive manufacture of advanced aerofoil designs which rotate at high speeds and efficiently compress the incoming air. These included: new forging methods; optimised machining; improvements to the Superplastic Forming process. The project aimed to achieve 30% improvement in productivity, 100% Right First Time, and significantly reduced process cycle times. This project was a collaboration between Rolls-Royce, the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and Advanced Forging and Forming Research Centre (AFRC). The project incorporated multiple new tooling and machining technologies, and novel processes to produce great improvements in forging high temperature aerospace materials, to significantly increase die life and accuracy of finished components. These improvements and the development of new form tools have reduced the amount of operations to manufacture the front bearing housing and rear outer casting. There were also significant improvements in the Super Plastic Forming, significantly increasing process understanding, reducing tooling and validation costs and new product introduction lead time.As a result, Rolls-Royce has safeguarded 15 UK jobs and purchased over £4m of capital equipment for aerofoil machining / forging in the Inchinnan facility and super plastic forming in the Barnoldswick facility. Many of the technologies developed in this project will be deployed in the new facility in Barnoldswick where Rolls-Royce is investing over £28m for a wide chord fan blade facility extension. This will provide a significant work to SMEs and local suppliers to provide tooling, fixtures, dies and materials. Rolls-Royce will incorporate the new Super Plastic Forming technologies onto all future SPF blades produced at Barnoldswick, with an opportunity to apply this technology onto legacy components. The first exploitation of the technologies developed will be in the Trent 1000 and XWB engines.“Rolls-Royce, working in conjunction with the Research Centres has overcome significant technical challenges to develop technologies that offer tighter specification aerofoils, helping to significantly improve future aerofoil manufacture at our Inchinnan and Barnoldswick facilities.” Steve Burgess, Director, Manufacturing Technology, Rolls-Royce