Classed as a serious safety threat, a fan blade out event occurs when a foreign object - such as a bird - is caught by an aircraft’s engine, causing one of the rotor blades to detach. The damage caused is so critical to the engine that it stops producing power, although the engine will continue to rotate due to the incoming airflow, an effect which is known as ‘windmilling’. This places high levels of stress on the aircraft’s flight systems and the ability of the systems to withstand these conditions must be validated through rigorous tests.

As such extreme conditions are usually outside the capabilities of normal test systems, Element invested in Brüel & Kjær’s LDS V8 electrodynamic test system to provide its customers with the certainty that their products would meet the most stringent testing standards.

The V8 is an air-cooled electrodynamic shaker for vibration and mechanical shock testing of large payloads up to 700 kg (1540 lb.). Its combination of large displacement and wide-duration shock pulses matches specific requirements for testing windmilling, making it ideal for Element to test this effect on components such as aircraft engines and fan blades.

Element has the largest capacity for aerospace EMC and environmental testing in the UK, investigating over a thousand aerospace products each year across six testing centers. The company works with aerospace businesses to support them through the complex nature of qualification testing of aerospace components and ensure they can deliver against airframe manufacturers’ imposed qualification milestones.

More information about Element’s windmilling system is available on the company’s website: https://www.element.com

Ends

About Element

The recognized leader in Materials Testing and Product Qualification Testing

Element Materials Technology exists to ensure that the materials and products that are in use in some of the world’s most advanced industrial sectors are always safe; of marketable quality; compliant to all relevant industry standards and most of all are fit for purpose in their end application.

What we ultimately deliver is Certainty to those industries where failure simply is not an option.

That is “The Certainty of Element”.

https://www.element.com/

About Brüel & Kjær

Brüel & Kjær is a world-leading manufacturer and supplier of sound and vibration measurement systems.

We help customers measure and manage the quality of sound and vibration in their products and in the environment. Focus areas are aerospace, space, defence, automotive, ground transportation, airport environment, urban environment, telecom and audio.

Brüel & Kjær has an unparalleled portfolio of sound and vibration equipment and is a long-established designer and manufacturer of innovative instrumentation including sound level meters, microphones, accelerometers, conditioning amplifiers, calibrators, noise and vibration analysers, and PULSE software.

We also design and manufacture the LDS range of vibration test systems, as well as complete airport and environmental monitoring systems: WebTrak, ANOMS, NoiseOffice and Sentinel.

To see the full range of solutions, systems and products, please visit www.bksv.com