A multi-engine, instrument rated pilot, James Wynbrandt has been an AIN and Business Jet Traveler contributor since 2003. His in-depth reporting and insightful features have won more than a dozen editorial honors, including two National Business Aviation Association Gold Wing Awards (2019; 2021), and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Barron’s, Fortune, Forbes, and Smithsonian Air &amp; Space. He has flown his Mooney M20K 252 on assignments throughout North and Central America and the Caribbean. Wynbrandt is also the author of Flying High (Wiley &amp; Sons), a biography of Jet Blue founder David Neeleman, as well as histories, references works, and books on a variety of other topics from major publishers. He lives in New York City.

Contributor - Business Aviation

James Wynbrandt

Rolls-Royce has successfully achieved the 10,000 test cycle mark in the Pearl 15 engine test program, and the turbofan has now surpassed 2,600 testing hours, the company reported on Tuesday at NBAA 2018. Thus far, six individual Pearl 15 development engines with 14 builds have been used in 27 test campaigns.

 


“This is an important milestone that underpins an on-track delivery,” said&nbsp;Dirk Geisinger, director business aviation at Rolls-Royce (Booth 3800). “Our comprehensive testing program guarantees sophisticated maturity and reliability levels from the outset.”

 


The development program includes tests under extreme icing conditions, massive water ingestions, lightning strikes, and long-lasting maturity runs, designed to put the engine “under enormous stress,” according to Rolls-Royce. For cold start tests, the entire engine is cooled to below -40 degrees C, a temperature where the viscosity of fuel is comparable to honey, and the engine must start and run up to takeoff thrust without disruption. For water ingestion tests, aimed at proving the engine won’t fail “even when flying directly through the worst thunderstorms,” water flowing at 6,000 gph is sprayed at the fan for three minutes, much greater than expected to be encountered when in service.

 


Unveiled at EBACE in May in parallel with the new Bombardier Global 5500 and Global 6500 jets it will power, the Pearl 15 received EASA certification in February. Rolls-Royce’s facility in Dahlewitz, Germany, is now building the first production standard engines and preparing for production ramp up, with entry into service expected at the end of next year.

 


The Pearl engine combines technologies derived from Rolls-Royce’s Advance2 technology demonstrator programs and incorporates proven features from the BR700 business aviation engine family. The Pearl 15 also “exemplifies” the UK company’s IntelligentEngine vision of a future where product and service “become indistinguishable thanks to advancements in digital capability,” it said. This includes a new-generation Engine Health Monitoring System that introduces advanced vibration detection&nbsp;and incorporates advanced remote diagnostics and bi-directional communications that allow easy remote reconfiguration of engine-monitoring features from the ground.

 


More powerful than the company’s successful BR710, the Pearl 15 has a maximum certified thrust of 15,250 pounds and up to 7 percent better specific fuel consumption. It’s also 2 dB cumulative quieter and shows a 20 percent improvement in NOx emissions margin.

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