Kevin Falley

Sept. 16th, 2017

AERO3423

LEAP Engine Design Flaws

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I am currently an employee of General Electric Aviation Materials (GEAM). In the years

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that I have been there, I have seen many new engine designs be assigned for production. The

most advertised of them, within the company, and outside, was the LEAP. In 2015, General
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Electric in partnership with Safran International and CFM Materials, unleashed the LEAP design
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engine. This was a new adaptation of the everlasting CFM56 engine line. There were three main

reasons that this engine was put into production, per CFM’s website; fifteen percent fuel

improvement, reliability by design, and less weight, more durable (CFMAeroEngines). Now,

with every great design, there always tend to be issues. The LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B are no

https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/
 exception. These engines were designed to be in the air longer, without having to go into

maintenance as often.

Though, the issues with the LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B, may not be issues so drastic that

they are causing issues while in flight, they are causing issues none the less. When engines are

put into production, they are tested first. During the testing of these engines, there were not the

issues that they found after flight. The engine originally had exposed fuel lines. After some initial

testing, the engineers thought the engine was needing some thing to cool the fuel lines a little

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more. They decided to add a number of heat shields around and on fuel lines. These are made of

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aluminum, and were put on after the engine was completed. They were thin sheets of aluminum,

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that were molded to fit around the fuel lines. The theory was that these would keep the fuel lines
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protected from direct heat coming from the housing. The problem was they were designed to
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wrap around the lines, instead of going completely over the lines. Once in the air, these pieces
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started shaking from the wind, and were rattling off. Once in the engine casing, they can cause

full engine shut down if they are sucked into an air duct or air manifold. These fuel lines were
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https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/
 taking some damage from the shaking of the engine in flight. These heat shields were added by

the engineers afterwards, which cause the human factor error. When the engines were designed

on a computer, everything looked to be running without error, but when the in flight tests were

going on, they were receiving numerous errors caused from the heat shields falling off. Above is

a picture of the LEAP-1A, and you can see the HMU(Hydraulic Mechanical Unit) that sends the

fuel to the designated places around the engine. The fuel lines that are exposed are the ones that

were cased with the pieces of aluminum. When they are encased, they take the brunt of the forces

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of wind and torque from the engine.

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A number of the parts on the engine are designed and made on three dimensional printers.
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This makes the parts fully dense and twenty-five percent lighter than otherwise manufactured.
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https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/
 The good thing about these parts being printed, is there is far less engineering that goes into

them. They are pulled off of the printer, cleaned, and put into production. There is little to no

need of engineering to take place because of the way they are printed.

There have been issues with the compression ratio, with higher compression, you do not

have to use as much fuel at high levels of torque. The compression needs to stay the same thru

flight on the ground and in the air. This compression is thrown off by one part that is not;

1. Lined up in the proper position.

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2. If the parts are not placed with the correct amount of spacing. 


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These issues can cause an error in flight, which may be the reason that these engines are

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being grounded. rs e
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This is where another basic human factor comes into play as well. The maintenance
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shops, or building shops. This is where they build and maintain these engines. How often do you
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think that these mechanics are always in their right mind. They do not always get the appropriate

amount of sleep. There is very little training on these engines, and they are being brought into
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shops for shop visits, and it causes some discrepancies in the work being done to these engines.
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“maintenance factors related to training maintenance workers; the clarity of maintenance

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procedures; and designing aircraft equipment and maintenance tools to make it easier for
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workers to perform maintenance, avoid errors, and detect abnormal conditions” (nap.edu)

All of the basic human factors come into play when these engines are going back to a shop.

Because these engines are coming back into the shop, there are performance issues, national and

international regulations that must be followed. It is imperative that these engines are segregated

https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/
 from one another, so that it is known what country they came from, and where they’re going

back to.

national and international regulatory factors associated with airworthiness standards, separation

standards, and communications standards (nap.edu)

All of the training of mechanics must be maintained, they must be kept up to date on all training

that is going on. With the implantation of these new engines coming back to shops, means that

you can only have a short number of mechanics trained on how to work on them. You must be

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able to keep up the maintenance of the other engines coming in. With having very few mechanics

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with the capabilities of working on these engines, the fact that they have personal lives comes

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into play. You must take into consideration that these people may not be able to show up to work
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everyday, they get sick, kids get sick forcing them to stay home, they may also be taking
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vacation as well. These issues may cause a delay, but the big issue is when they return, they must
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remember where they left off on the engine.

As you can see, there are multiple stages of compression blades that are all connected at
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the shaft. All of these blades receive their power from the same source. The blades at the front
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are completely printed using carbon fiber material. They are light weight and durable. The Stage
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1 compression disk is where they are receiving the low pressure from:
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The one major post-delivery issue with the engines was traced to a manufacturing problem on

Leap 1B low-pressure turbine disks. Safran, which shares Leap construction with GE as a CFM

joint-venture partner, discovered a production quality defect on a disk during assembly. About 30

engines were singled out as possibly having a disk from the affected batch, and CFM is working

https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/
 with Boeing “to minimize flight-test and customer-delivery disruptions,” Francois Bastin,

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Safran’s executive vice president and CFM program manager.

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Though, Boeing has not completely grounded flights due to this is issue, CFM stands to say that

the issue at hand is going to be resolved. The issue is causing a high level fuel consumption that
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was not anticipated. The over use of fuel does not meet the use of fuel in the CFM56-7B, which
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until 2015 was the main engine out in use of production by CFM Aero International. This
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compression issue is being summed up by CFM Aero International as a “quality

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issue”(bizjournal). The issue with this could be that these fuel nozzles have not been able to be

massed produced. There is a large order for the best selling new engine thus far, but the

production rate was not taken into effect. With working on this knowledge, it may be hard to find

to keep up with production. They cannot just allow these to fly out of production without testing

them individually. This is what is causing the loss of power in the air, and is essentially burning

https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/
 more fuel than promised by the design experts. The company who built the individual part is

apparently using other material not stated to CFM. "We are working with CFM to inspect the

discs in question. CFM and its supplier notified us after discovering the issue as a part of their

quality inspection process. At no time have we experienced an issue associated with the LPT

during our ongoing Max testing program.” (Boeing)

There are design flaws in everything that we touch. Not everything that is originally

designed, is used for it’s proposed purpose. When we make errors, we may end up finding the

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next big lightbulb, or wheel.

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Sources: rs e
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https://www.nap.edu/read/6265/chapter/7#41
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GE On Wing Support Mechanics

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CFM Aero Engines-https://www.cfmaeroengines.com/engines/leap/

MRO-Network-http://www.mro-network.com/engines-engine-systems/issues-newest-engines-
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provide-early-mro-proving-opportunities
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https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/05/10/boeing-halts-737-max-testing-cfm-
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leap-1b-engine.html
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https://www.coursehero.com/file/32162815/LEAPDesignFinalpdf/

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