"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
One of the things I have experienced in my career is the mind boggling complexity of the software in systems that are capable of killing people. The more people it can kill the more complex the software.
As a result when I read articles like the one posted I find it tantalizing to speculate about the requirements behind the story. Taking the story at face value that Boeing has thought a lot about it and that is how the software has to be, what prevents the other solution of disabling the reverser? My guess is that you want the reverser to work in the event of software failure so it has to always work, but if the pilots pull it while you are flying that would probably rip the engines off the plane. Perhaps the compromise is to take the reverser off during flight and relight the engines using aerial pressure to spin up the engines. (which has me wondering if airlines still have a turbine they can drop down to start an APU which can then be used to start the engines). Which leads me to wondering if the pilots turn off the reverser right away do they have enough residual engine power to relight? Versus when they got to the end of the runway and had nothing? Clearly the 777 doesn't have an APU running when it lands since they would have used that to do an engine start at the end of the runway or if it does, it isn't running.
It is one of those things that my like minded systems friends could sit around lunch and make a good hour and a half discussion out of.
If the reverser could rip the engine off the wing, it wouldn't be safe to engage on the ground. Just thought that was worth pointing out.
A reverser only redirects thrust, and only generates about 60% of max thrust pushing backwards.
It's only on for a limited time on the ground because under a certain speed, you run the risk of blowing FOD into the intake path, putting the engine at risk.
I'm not aware of any reason to outright lockout a reverser in flight other than to hedge your bets against a very, very poor set of configuration choices by the pilot (reversing near stall speed too low to recover). I could foresee scenarios where being able to use reversers in the air could save the aircraft with the right combination of subsystem casualties.
Not a pilot or engineer, but absolutely LOVE aviation.
The cruising airspeed of an airplane is faster than its landing speed. I don't know if that alone is enough to rip the engine off the wing, but it's something that it sounds like you did not consider in making your point.
[EDIT remove "roughly speaking an order of magnitude"]
Thanks for bringing more precision to the conversation (really).
What would you like to call the factor? 3? Call me a weasel, but I was hoping "roughly speaking an order of magnitude" would go down to 3. I suspected it was comfortably above 2. Am I right about that?
It's surprisingly non-trivial to pin down exactly what the 'correct' scale[0] for a given measurement is. I do agree about "roughly" generally being up to a factor of two in the appropriate scale[1], although I'm the sort who thinks a 19% increase (or 16% decrease) should be called a quarter of a factor of two.
0: Uniform, linear and logarithmic are obvious candidates, but depending on the domain you can end up with some really wierd scales (eg floating-point ULPs, which can look logarithmic or linear, but aren't either).
1: hence > So you're off by more than a factor of two.
re go down to 3:
Use different words and see if you think it was reasonable
roughly 10x going down to 3x would also mean it would go up to 17x. That's a pretty wide range, so I don't think that order of magnitude is going to ever really be similar to 3x of something on the basis of what it means.
Your wording makes it where you aren’t factually wrong, but a plane was in fact wripped apart due to the thrust reverser engaging on one engine of a 767:
The difference isn't that large in the grand scheme of things. The engine mount would have to be able to fail in it's operational envelope in order for the reverser kicking in to be realistic.
In fact, the reversed kicking in would decrease the loading on the aircraft by decreasing it's airspeed.
This isn't a case of acceleration being able to break the mount from the frame. If it ever could, one wouldn't want it on the plane in the first place.
Doesn't mean you couldn't ruin your day with it, but it isn't an instant catastrophic failure either.
> but it isn't an instant catastrophic failure either.
Read the accident report and follow up on Lauda Air Flight 004. Boeing specifically was forced to issue a statement that it was virtually impossible to overcome a catastrophic failure outcome from a thrust reverser deploying at cruising speed.
Apropos, the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_reversal) mentions number of events where an engine reverser was deployed in flight, one involving a 767 which resulted in the loss of the aircraft.
That counts as a pretty serious thing to avoid :-).
Why "still"? Even if the chances of a failure of both engines is almost zero, it has happened that there are losses of fuel. The ram-air turbine allows the pilots to have some instrumentation. That's super useful, for example in this accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
One of the things I have experienced in my career is the mind boggling complexity of the software in systems that are capable of killing people. The more people it can kill the more complex the software.
As a result when I read articles like the one posted I find it tantalizing to speculate about the requirements behind the story. Taking the story at face value that Boeing has thought a lot about it and that is how the software has to be, what prevents the other solution of disabling the reverser? My guess is that you want the reverser to work in the event of software failure so it has to always work, but if the pilots pull it while you are flying that would probably rip the engines off the plane. Perhaps the compromise is to take the reverser off during flight and relight the engines using aerial pressure to spin up the engines. (which has me wondering if airlines still have a turbine they can drop down to start an APU which can then be used to start the engines). Which leads me to wondering if the pilots turn off the reverser right away do they have enough residual engine power to relight? Versus when they got to the end of the runway and had nothing? Clearly the 777 doesn't have an APU running when it lands since they would have used that to do an engine start at the end of the runway or if it does, it isn't running.
It is one of those things that my like minded systems friends could sit around lunch and make a good hour and a half discussion out of.