Looking for books on aircraft engine maintenance

[Timothy S.]

Can anyone, please, recommend me some books with the complete information about how turbofan engines are maintained?

Thank you

 

[Lnewqban]

You may get some good suggestions by contacting these people:
https://pwcustomertraining-catalog.com/general-courses.html

 

[berkeman]

Can anyone, please, recommend me some books with the complete information about how turbofan engines are maintained?

Can you say more about why you are interested in this? Is it just a general interest, or are you thinking about a career as an aircraft mechanic, and want to do some self-studying to see if you want to go to school for this?

Paging @Flyboy

 

[Flyboy]

Can you say more about why you are interested in this? Is it just a general interest, or are you thinking about a career as an aircraft mechanic, and want to do some self-studying to see if you want to go to school for this?

Paging @Flyboy

WHOMST PONG’D???

Can anyone, please, recommend me some books with the complete information about how turbofan engines are maintained?

Thank you

For a basic overview of powerplant maintenance as a whole, there’s two textbooks that are frequently used in A&P mechanic schools, often referred to as “the Dale Crane series” and “the ASA series”. They compliment each other nicely, and are generally not terribly expensive to pick up second hand.

More “complete” books are maintenance manuals and are usually pretty tightly controlled by the manufacturers and customers. It’s possible to find the manuals of an old engine design on microfilm or microfiche, but those are pretty rare and have probably been donated to a school or museum at this point.

 

[DaveE]

It's not really your question, but you might like some of AgentJayZ's YouTube videos about explaining and rebuilding jet engines.

 

[Rive]

Just for the log: if it's about actually flying (flyable ) machinery then the maintenance is just half the thing.
Permissions and paperwork is the other half.

 

[Flyboy]

Just for the log: if it's about actually flying (flyable ) machinery then the maintenance is just half the thing.
Permissions and paperwork is the other half.

Oh my god, yes. “Once the weight of paperwork equals the weight of the repair, only then is the plane allowed to fly” is less of a joke than you would think.

 

[Flyboy]

@EbalOsla what exactly are you looking to understand? I never worked with the big boys, like airliner engines, but I have worked with business jets. There are definitely some differences between them due to scale, but they are fairly similar in most regards.

 

[Timothy S.]

Can you say more about why you are interested in this? Is it just a general interest, or are you thinking about a career as an aircraft mechanic, and want to do some self-studying to see if you want to go to school for this?

Paging @Flyboy

Yes, I am interested in that because I want to work as an aircraft mechanic.
I am getting university degree in aeronautical engineering soon, but we did not study much about technical/mechanical aspects of turbofan engines so I want to improve my knowledge in this myself to be prepared for the future job.

 

[Timothy S.]

@EbalOsla what exactly are you looking to understand? I never worked with the big boys, like airliner engines, but I have worked with business jets. There are definitely some differences between them due to scale, but they are fairly similar in most regards.

I want to be, as well as possible, prepared for work as an aircraft mechanic (info about business jets is also good for me). My aeronautical engineering university degree does not teach much about technical/mechanical aspects of aircraft engines.

 

[Timothy S.]

WHOMST PONG’D???

For a basic overview of powerplant maintenance as a whole, there’s two textbooks that are frequently used in A&P mechanic schools, often referred to as “the Dale Crane series” and “the ASA series”. They compliment each other nicely, and are generally not terribly expensive to pick up second hand.

More “complete” books are maintenance manuals and are usually pretty tightly controlled by the manufacturers and customers. It’s possible to find the manuals of an old engine design on microfilm or microfiche, but those are pretty rare and have probably been donated to a school or museum at this point.

Thank you!

 

[Flyboy]

Okay, for starters, I am in the US, and mechanics and engineers are two very different school tracks. Mechanics are the folks on the ramp or in the hangar, hands on the hardware performing repairs. Engineers are the people who are usually in the office staring at the computer screen all day working with the design process. They can eventually cross over, and historically have, but it’s increasingly rare to see a mechanic turn into an engineer.
In Europe and Canada, an aircraft maintenance technician is often called a maintenance engineer, which is, imo, asking for serious confusion. So, which one are you pursuing?

Most technical schools like the ones most mechanics go through will focus on teaching you enough theory to get your feet under you and to not be an immediate burden/hazard in your first job. You don’t truly start to learn until you’re in your first job. And a good mechanic never stops learning.

Aeronautical/aerospace engineering schools, regrettably, focus too much on the more specialized areas of the degree and pass over basic knowledge that should be the foundation of the field. My girlfriend’s aerospace engineering program didn’t even teach basic stuff like how an internal combustion engine works, or how to do simple mechanical tasks like assembly or manufacturing a simple part, focusing on more advanced theoretical concepts like orbital mechanics or advanced thermodynamics. Useful stuff in some jobs, sure, but most engineers in her major aren’t going to need those. The only reason she understood that kind of stuff at all by the time she graduated was because she was always curious when her dad worked on the farm equipment, and she had a job on campus in their fabrication lab setting up experiment support equipment for the grad school students.

Sadly, this leads to a lot of engineering students and recent graduates coming out of school woefully underprepared for an actual engineering job, and they spend much of the next few years learning things that weren’t even remotely considered in the classes anymore. Things like “don’t mix three different screw standards in close proximity on a part with nearly identical sizes and then expect the assemblers to be able to correctly install them in the same step”. Or “we don’t need to address a known structural problem with a revised design because there’s a repair procedure for it”. I’ve seen both of those in person, and it’s immensely frustrating for the folks who have to live with the engineering team’s decisions.

Sorry, rant over.

In all seriousness, your desire to learn more is a great start for either track, and I encourage you to maintain that mindset. Once you get to the field and start your job, find the older and more experienced technicians who are willing to teach and learn what you can from them. That institutional/“tribal” knowledge is incredibly valuable and important, and is lost when they retire. If you’re pursuing the engineering side, find a senior engineer who is willing to mentor you on that side as well… there’s an enormous amount of business and human factors stuff that schools just pretend doesn’t exist because that’s effectively another two years of schooling in and if itself.

Hope this helps.

 

[Timothy S.]

Okay, for starters, I am in the US, and mechanics and engineers are two very different school tracks. Mechanics are the folks on the ramp or in the hangar, hands on the hardware performing repairs. Engineers are the people who are usually in the office staring at the computer screen all day working with the design process. They can eventually cross over, and historically have, but it’s increasingly rare to see a mechanic turn into an engineer.
In Europe and Canada, an aircraft maintenance technician is often called a maintenance engineer, which is, imo, asking for serious confusion. So, which one are you pursuing?

Most technical schools like the ones most mechanics go through will focus on teaching you enough theory to get your feet under you and to not be an immediate burden/hazard in your first job. You don’t truly start to learn until you’re in your first job. And a good mechanic never stops learning.

Aeronautical/aerospace engineering schools, regrettably, focus too much on the more specialized areas of the degree and pass over basic knowledge that should be the foundation of the field. My girlfriend’s aerospace engineering program didn’t even teach basic stuff like how an internal combustion engine works, or how to do simple mechanical tasks like assembly or manufacturing a simple part, focusing on more advanced theoretical concepts like orbital mechanics or advanced thermodynamics. Useful stuff in some jobs, sure, but most engineers in her major aren’t going to need those. The only reason she understood that kind of stuff at all by the time she graduated was because she was always curious when her dad worked on the farm equipment, and she had a job on campus in their fabrication lab setting up experiment support equipment for the grad school students.

Sadly, this leads to a lot of engineering students and recent graduates coming out of school woefully underprepared for an actual engineering job, and they spend much of the next few years learning things that weren’t even remotely considered in the classes anymore. Things like “don’t mix three different screw standards in close proximity on a part with nearly identical sizes and then expect the assemblers to be able to correctly install them in the same step”. Or “we don’t need to address a known structural problem with a revised design because there’s a repair procedure for it”. I’ve seen both of those in person, and it’s immensely frustrating for the folks who have to live with the engineering team’s decisions.

Sorry, rant over.

In all seriousness, your desire to learn more is a great start for either track, and I encourage you to maintain that mindset. Once you get to the field and start your job, find the older and more experienced technicians who are willing to teach and learn what you can from them. That institutional/“tribal” knowledge is incredibly valuable and important, and is lost when they retire. If you’re pursuing the engineering side, find a senior engineer who is willing to mentor you on that side as well… there’s an enormous amount of business and human factors stuff that schools just pretend doesn’t exist because that’s effectively another two years of schooling in and if itself.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for all the help!
It is very valuable!