Radarspotting
Miscellaneous => Aviation News => Topic started by: viking9 on February 23, 2013, 01:20:15 PM
The US has grounded its entire fleet of 51 F-35 fighter jets after the discovery of a cracked engine blade. The fault was detected during a routine inspection of an air force version of the jet (F-35A) at Edwards Air Force Base in California, said the Pentagon. Different versions are flown by the navy and the marine corps. All have been grounded. The F-35 is the Pentagon's most expensive weapons programme. with a cost of nearly $400bn (£260bn). The Pentagon said flight operations would remain suspended until the root cause is established. Friday's order was the second time in two months planes from the F-35 range have been grounded.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21554331
Safety comes first. ;D
Probably a turbine blade in the hot section, as they have stealth coatings that would be starting to fail just about now, based on hours of use.
Where on earth do you get that from? For a start all of the engines would be at different hours in their lives and if the engine manufacturer thought the blades were going to fail at x hours the engine life would have been set to allow for that and they certainly would not ground all 51 aircraft though they would probably call for a routine inspection of all engines.
I don't think they'd ground all the planes for a fan blade failure. They don't ground all the B-52's if one fan blade had a crack.
So I extrapolated that to why would they ground a fleet over a bad blade? Unless maybe the blade is a new process, so they ground the fleet to analyze this new process more.
I think most of the radar threat is in the turbine blades, and not in the compressor fan blades.
But to answer your question, yes I'm just guessing...
Quote from: viking9 on February 23, 2013, 05:50:24 PM
Where on earth do you get that from? For a start all of the engines would be at different hours in their lives and if the engine manufacturer thought the blades were going to fail at x hours the engine life would have been set to allow for that and they certainly would not ground all 51 aircraft though they would probably call for a routine inspection of all engines.