Rolls-Royce builds the world’s greatest engine – brick by brick

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Rolls-Royce builds the world’s greatest engine – brick by brick

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Tuesday 17 July 2018 10:00 AM

Rolls-Royce builds the world’s greatest engine – brick by brick

Rolls-Royce is getting ready to inspire budding engineers across the world by challenging them to build one of its engines of the future – brick by brick.

While the real-life UltraFan®, a next generation jet engine designed to power commercial aircraft, won’t be available until the middle of the next decade, a scaled-down LEGO version of the engine could be in the shops much sooner as a campaign to have the engine immortalised in the famous plastic bricks is close to reaching a key milestone.

And while the LEGO version of the engine won’t deliver up to 100,000lb of thrust and have a fan diameter about the height of an elephant, at 2,953 individual pieces it is still an engineering challenge and incorporates its own gearbox and rotating set of fan blades.

It is one of a number of creations that are up for a public vote on the LEGO ideas site. The UltraFan model needs just a further 1,000 votes to reach the 10,000 mark that would trigger it being considered for production and sale to the wider public.

Simon Burr, Rolls-Royce, Director Engineering and Technology, said: “We hope our LEGO UltraFan captures the imagination of the engineers of today and tomorrow. I’m sure anyone who manages to make all the parts come together will get some sense of the satisfaction we feel when one of our engines runs for the first time.”

Rolls-Royce hopes to use the LEGO engine as part of its educational outreach programmes to encourage young engineers of the future.

To see more information about the LEGO UltraFan engine and vote, go to ideas.lego.com.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

Rolls-Royce pioneers cutting-edge technologies that deliver the cleanest, safest and most competitive solutions to meet our planet’s vital power needs.
Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
Annual underlying revenue was £15 billion in 2017, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £78.5 billion at the end of December 2017.
In 2017, Rolls-Royce invested £1.4 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
Rolls-Royce employs 55,000 people in 50 countries. Approximately 19,400 of these are engineers.
The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2017 we recruited 313 graduates and 339 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes.

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