Jonathan E. Holt

Rolls-Royce · System Design

The development of a civil aerospace gas turbine engine within the required timescale and resource constraints presents a considerable challenge. How does a team of hundreds of engineers organize itself, not just to design the thousands of high technology components required, but to manage their interactions in order to ensure that the engine opera...

This case study describes the initial stages of Product System Families, a project to develop generic, reusable system design artefacts applicable to the complex systems with which Rolls-Royce equips its aerospace products. Using the example of a gas turbine tip clearance control system, the system thinking behind Product System Families is outline...

A method and arrangement of controlling blade pitch angle of a set of rotor blades. The method comprises providing a target blade pitch angle to a controller mounted on the rotor; measuring the speed of rotation of the rotor using a rate gyro mounted on the rotor; calculating the blade pitch angle required to match the target blade pitch angle by s...

A engine such as a gas turbine engine has a bladed rotor 24 having variable pitch blades 8. In normal operation, the pitch angle of the blades 8 is controlled by a primary pitch control system. A back-up system is provided for controlling the blades 8, for example to displace them to a feathered condition, in the event of failure of the primary pit...

A design process for system architecture design using multi-criteria optimization is described using a case study of an aero engine health management (EHM) system. The EHM system functional operations need to be deployed in order to satisfy their operational attribute requirements within the constraints of resource limitations. Considering the larg...

System architecture design using multi-criteria optimization is demonstrated using a case study of an aero engine health management (EHM) system. A design process for optimal deployment of EHM system functional operations over physical architecture component locations, e.g., on-engine, on-aircraft and on-ground, is described. The EHM system archite...

The introduction of new technology is a major challenge ‐ probably the major challenge ‐ for organisations such as Rolls‐Royce whose business is developing and maintaining complex systems. In competitive market conditions, an organisation which takes a too conservative approach will fall behind in the introduction of new technology and quickly lose...