The engine that broke Rolls-Royce.
The pioneering RB211 turbofan engine drove the world renowned Rolls-Royce company to the very edge of bankruptcy - but it was to become one of the best and most commercially successful aircraft power plants ever built.
The idea of a gas-turbine driven ducted-fan aero engine was first proposed by Dr. A. A. Griffith of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, in the late 1930s, but it was not until 1958 that a working example was built, by Pratt & Whitney in the USA. A fan engine uses less fuel and makes less noise than a conventional turbojet of the same power. The fan is in effect a very efficient propeller spinning in a close-fitting duct and providing up to ninety percent of the total thrust delivered.
Rolls-Royce developed the idea from the early 1960s with their Conway 'bypass' turbojet, then the Trent 2 three-shaft turbofan. The RB211 was designed to a requirement in 1968 by the American Lockheed Corporation for a turbofan delivering about 40,000 pounds of thrust for its new Tristar airliner. Meeting the design specifications demanded much pioneering work on new materials and manufacturing methods.
Technical problems, especially with the fan blades, combined with adverse economic conditions to push up development costs to the point where Rolls-Royce was forced into receivership in 1971. The company was effectively nationalised and reconstituted as Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd, with the Government underwriting the RB211’s development costs.
Outstandingly successful, the RB211 sired a line of ever larger and more powerful engines, notably the Trent 700, 800 and 900 series which deliver up to 70,000 pounds of thrust and have proved so economical and reliable that they power around half of the long-haul airlines currently in service.
Derby Museums’ largest and most imposing single exhibit, RB211-22c No 10040, is one of the first production batch and was used from 1971 on the Tristar test programme. After 185 flights the engine was returned to Rolls-Royce for overhaul. It had a further, brief, test-flying career mounted on a Royal Airforce VC10 transport, afterwards becoming a ground instructional engine before presentation to the museum in 1981.
Currently to be found in the RB211 Gallery at The Silk Mill - Derby's Museum of Industry and History.
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