Bird ingestion poses a significant risk to jet engines, particularly during flight at high speeds. Engines are designed to withstand impacts from birds weighing 2-3 pounds at speeds around 300 mph, but such strikes can cause severe damage, including bent blades and flow disruption. While engines like the GE CF34-3A are robust enough to handle minor strikes without catastrophic failure, they often require inspection and replacement of damaged components post-incident. The certification process for engines includes testing for bird strikes, but extraordinary circumstances can lead to engine destruction.
PREREQUISITESAerospace engineers, aviation safety professionals, and aircraft maintenance technicians will benefit from this discussion, particularly those involved in jet engine design and certification processes.
Airplane engines are, in fact, designed to be able to absorb a bird ingestion under certain conditions. I'm not sure what the exact criteria is, but it is a bird of perhaps 2 or 3 pounds, thrown-in at around 300 mph.amz8601 said:thank you for your time, i understand the sense behind making the engine as light as possible and yet strong enough to withstand the great stresses felt by its components, but does that mean the engine is then damaged and useless?
if so, wouldn't it make more sense to make the engines slightly stronger (thicker, heavier components) that would be able to withstand such shocks, so that the engines wouldn't need to be "thrown away" if such an event happened?
Dunno what "rare" is, but perhaps a few a year. Here's one recently caught on video:also, how often do these accidents happen? is it rare to have some object pass into a jet engine?
No, they don't. Fighter planes may bleed air or bypass it, but they don't do it to pass fod. The engine is sucking in, so you can't direct a bird around it if it wants to eat the bird. Here's what happens if you forget to duck near a jet engine intake:i understand that some fighter planes use a trap door in the inlet that follows through to the back of the jet, in the event of objects entering the duct they hit the trap door and exit without going into the compressor etc...
Not an issue - it isn't possible for a bird to get stuck in an engine. Think about it like a 30,000 horsepower blender.jaap de vries said:I can also remember to weight the bolts on a jet to make sure there is a nice axisymetric load distribution. I can only imagine what the off balance of a two pound bird stuck to a blade will do to the vibration
russ_watters said:Not an issue - it isn't possible for a bird to get stuck in an engine. Think about it like a 30,000 horsepower blender.
Bird ingestion is, in the USA, part of the engine certification process. The test criteria depends on the size of the engine, i.e. fan diameter and thrust. That dictates the weight of the bird and the number of birds to be ingested during the test. Of course, when out in the real world, there's nothing saying that a larger bird can not be ingested. The passing criteria is that an engine remain at rated power (with only a very small percentage of degradation of power) for 5 minutes and then shut down normally. An engine will suffer some very serious damage, but it does not destroy it. A certified engine would have to experience some extra ordinary circumstances to be destroyed by a bird strike.amz8601 said:How can a small bird made of bone and flesh manage to shut down a jet engine made from strong metals and alloys??