With an internal area of 7,500 square metres, making it larger than a Premiership football pitch, the testbed conducted its first run on a Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine at the test facility in Derby, UK.
This is a major milestone in the project which has been under construction for almost three years and represents a £90m investment.
Chris Cholerton, president Rolls-Royce Civil Aerospace, said: “Today is an important landmark in our journey towards a more sustainable future for aerospace and aviation.
"Testbed 80 will not only test engines such as the Trent XWB – the world’s most efficient aero-engine in service – but also the engines and propulsion systems of the future, which will see us take another step towards decarbonisation. It’s great that the first engine test has been a success and we are looking forward to the official opening of the facility in the coming months.”
Testbed 80 has been designed to test a range of today’s engines, including the Trent XWB and the Trent 1000, but will have the capability to test the UltraFan® demonstrator, our blueprint for the next generation of even more efficient engines, as well as the hybrid or all-electric flight systems of the future.
The versatility of the testbed means it is able to accommodate engines of all sizes up to 155klbf thrust – that’s enough power to launch a Boeing 747 with one (huge) engine.
Testbed 80 is equipped with a 140,000 litre fuel tank (you could fill your car up almost 3,000 times with this amount of fuel) for different fuel types, including SAFs.
