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The Rolls-Royce Trent XWB is a British series of turbofan jet engines developed from the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000. It is presently used only on the Airbus A350 XWB.
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Design and development
By 2004 Airbus had been facing pressure from customers to develop a competitor to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, then in October 2005 formally launched a new aircraft designated the Airbus A350. Rolls-Royce initially offered a variant of the Trent 1000 engine, with a throttle-push to 75,000 lbf (330 kN) static thrust, which was dubbed the Trent 1700. Unlike the Trent 1000, the Trent 1700 would have been a conventional bleed-air engine and would have been developed in partnership with Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
After a review of the Airbus A350, Rolls-Royce reached an agreement to supply all versions of the aircraft with a brand-new engine variant, currently known as the Trent XWB. This was originally announced with a static thrust range of 75,000–95,000 lbf (330–420 kN), but by September 2007 Airbus had revised their requirements down to 75,000–93,000 lbf (330–410 kN). This was then revised again, and the engines for the largest A350 have been uprated to 97,000 lbf (430 kN) to meet new performance requirements, and better compete with the Boeing 777-300ER. Unlike previous marks of Trent, the XWB features a 2-stage, rather than a single stage, IP turbine.
On 18 June 2007 Rolls-Royce announced that it had signed its biggest ever contract, with Qatar Airways, worth US$5.6 billion at list prices. This was for 80 Airbus A350 XWBs, powered by Trent XWB engines. On 11 November 2007 another large contract was announced at the Dubai Airshow, with Emirates, for Trent XWBs to power 50 A350-900 and 20 A350-1000 aircraft, with a further 50 option rights. Due to be delivered from 2014, the Emirates order was potentially worth up to $8.4 billion at list prices, including options. However, on 11 June 2014, Airbus announced that Emirates Airline had decided to cancel its order of 70 A350 XWB aircraft.
More than 1,500 engines had been sold by July 2015 to 40 customers. Rolls-Royce offered its maintenance program to Vietnam Airlines for £340 million for 14 airplanes, or £12.1 million per engine.
MDS Aero began testing the XWB engine in the Aerotest facility for Rolls Royce.
The first engine test on a static test-bed was made on 14 June 2010 and, on 18 February 2012, Airbus announced that the Trent XWB had successfully made its maiden flight aboard Airbus’ dedicated Airbus A380 flying test bed. Certification for the early engine variants was achieved in 2013, and the first engine was expected to enter service in 2014. The first flight of the Trent XWB powering the Airbus A350 XWB took place on 14 June 2013.
On 15 May 2014 Rolls-Royce delivered the first production 84,000 lbf (370 kN) thrust Trent XWB engines intended for the first Airbus A350 XWB to enter service with Qatar Airways. Final assembly of these production engines had started in February 2014. On 15 July 2014 Rolls-Royce announced the first run of the Trent XWB-97 powerplant with 97,000 lbf (430 kN) thrust for the Airbus A350-1000.
Specifications (Trent XWB)
Data from