What happens when a drone gets ingested by an aircraft engine, FAA ready to conduct live test . . .

[BigAl07]

Show or not show the result will probably be not good for drones. The blades of a jet engine are of stiff material and as it must light as well it is prone to brake at high speed impact with any object. The soft tissue of birds may do less demage then the stiff object but all depends of it's weigt.
It would be interesting to know which craft would get more harm the jet or a propeller driven
Ò

While weight is a significant factor it's not as important as rigidity. Compare getting hit in your head by a 1lb bag of feathers compared to a 1lb brick.

The blades can withstand a lot but insanely tight tolerances of the components and the rigidity of the motors/battery of the UAS will most likely cause considerable blade damage/distortion and at speed cause failure throughout the unit.

Here's a video showing what a single blade release can do to the jet engine at operating speed.

A Goose (really any bird) is very frangible but many components of the UAS (motors & battery) are not.

 

[simon9]

While weight is a significant factor it's not as important as rigidity. Compare getting hit in your head by a 1lb bag of feathers compared to a 1lb brick.

Or a 1/2 oz bullet.

Maybe its about time they put grill guards on the engine inlets
Save the drones! Save the geese! Save the man (for the odd that's been sucked in, etc! 'Rebellion Suckedinstinction' anyone?

And lets not forget RC planes, Helicopters etc rather than singling out just drones?,

 

[Starz]

Grill guards would do two things.
Restrict air flow(not good for a jet engine)and probably act as a shredding device for whatever makes contact with said guard.

 

[H20man]

It is about time this test is being scheduled......

 

[ArnoldLeVine]

I was on an airline flight (very early am) on its takeoff roll. Sudden BANG! (and I mean loud) from an engine. Abort.
It was a bird ingested into the engine. We sat for a couple of hours waiting for a certified engine mechanic to arrive and inspect the engine. There ended up being no engine damage and we took off.
If it had been a Phantom, I don't think the engine would have possibly be put back into service. Anyone here volunteer to be on the flight with that Phantom ingested engine? Not me.

 

[ArnoldLeVine]

South of Austin, CFAN makes the carbon fiber fan blades for GE Jet engines. After construction, they are micro xray inspected, even the tiniest of flaws fails the blade. The fan blades in operation spin at about 3000 rpm. Imagine the impact of a Phantom with those blades.

 

[Andy9]

Being on the ground you have the choice to be on the plain or not. But what if this happens in the air. The velocity would push the drone much more deep into the engine for sure. And you have no free choice then. But luckely there is almost impossible to get the drone into the engine at that altitude.

 

[BigAl07]

South of Austin, CFAN makes the carbon fiber fan blades for GE Jet engines. After construction, they are micro xray inspected, even the tiniest of flaws fails the blade. The fan blades in operation spin at about 3000 rpm. Imagine the impact of a Phantom with those blades.

Very true. I worked for a few years actually machining jet components for GE and Pratt & Whitney and the toleranaces on the rotating components are insanely tight. Tighter than anything else we produced.

Keep in mind that the first component, Main Fan spins at 3,000RPM but the next components are even more critical of flaws and damage because they are spinning significantly faster. The Low Pressure Shaft is spinning up to 12,000RPM and the High Pressure Shaft up to 20,000RPM.

So it wouldn't take much "hard/rigid" debris to cause significant failure. Even if the debris doesn't cause an immediate failure (slinging on blade etc) ,due to the tight tolerances the smallest of rigid debris could cause a cascade of problems leading to a catastrophic failure and this would happen in a matter of seconds.

 

[Andy9]

So a bird can be very dangerous to jet planes? It is surprizing that such incidents are so rare although it happens. The most known was that of pilot Sullenberg - Sully when he landed in the Hudson river because birds destroyed both engines.

 

[TontoFAC]

Don't know why they are wasting the money on this. An object as small as a nut can shell out an engine. There are thousands of accident reports that the USAF has documented. I think is is a witch hunt to disparage our UAV's.