© Rolls-Royce Group plc 2004
Legal information
   Highlights of the year
Our philosophy is to obtain maximum value by investing once and using many times. We draw upon the technological advances of aero products and directly apply them to the marine and energy product range, reducing risk and cost. The Marine Trent MT30 is the latest addition to the Trent family and its design change from the Trent 800 aero engine is limited to what is necessary to adapt the engine to its new environment, resulting in 80 per cent commonality. Similarly, the industrial Trent is based upon the Trent 800 and incorporates the latest aero engine components, materials and technologies to make it the most efficient industrial gas turbine in its class. We aim to deliver single engine architectures that can satisfy various customer requirements, stretching across civil and military as well as sector specific products. We achieved this with the AE 1107, AE 3007 and the AE 2100, where military technology has been used to develop an engine family which has then been incorporated into civil applications. Experience built up by the civil fleet is now being transferred back into the military applications to improve operability and reliability. Cost reduction is often possible through technology transfer even if components cannot be directly used. Computational Fluid Dynamics methods are sufficiently generic that they can be used for the design of an aero engine swept fan or a propeller design for a marine application. The development of technology to support our aftermarket services aims to maximise utilisation, minimise disruption and increase product reliability. We achieve this through utilising fleet wide, in-service data to anticipate engine maintenance requirements. We have a structured technology acquisition vision. Vision5 ensures that our current products remain market leaders in every aspect of performance, reliability and cost. We do this by applying ‘off the shelf’ technology to near-term new products and to our existing products via upgrade and improvement programmes. An example of this is the world leading swept fan technology for the Trent 900. Vision10 enables the development of a further generation of market leading products, through the introduction of leading edge, minimum risk technology which we are demonstrating and validating today. This is exemplified by the ANTLE programme, which is a European Union programme led by Vision20 includes technologies that are currently emerging or are, as yet, unproven. It will ensure that we are prepared for the future by focusing our extensive research base on the technology requirements of future generations of products across the aerospace, marine and energy sectors. New engine concepts including advanced cycles and alternative fuels will require new technologies to be developed. A few examples of such technologies include advanced high temperature materials, electrical material advances and novel heat exchangers for aerospace applications. Our research base is global, encompassing international centres in three continents. Collaborative research into areas such as turbo machinery and high-temperature materials is conducted with some of North America’s foremost academic centres of technological excellence. Several institutes in China, Japan and Singapore work with  |
|
   |
||