Dixie
Posts: 9535
Joined: 3/10/2006
From: UK
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
Can't imagine that would be an endearing aspect of work. My 'entertaining' in quotes was meant in jest to suggest that it must be a bit concerning having birds fly into engines. Witness the role geese played in bringing down that flight into the Hudson river a few years ago.
Since bird gore is my domain, I'm curious. What means of collecting bits of bird from the inside of an engine to you use? You can't just wash it with water, can you? Do you literally have to pick each little micron of flesh and sinew off of the fan blades and whatnot?
Also, I assume that there is less concern for turboprop aircraft with bird strikes? Seems less likely that you'll have a bird 'ingestion' / engine flame-out than a jet engine, but what do I know?
It wasn't the finest hour (or 24) of my career, strangely it's not an area they advertise in the careers office Join the RAF and scrub bits of dead bird from an engine. I had an inkling you were talking in jest.
There are various checks to carry out depending on where the bird debris has gone, or is believed to have gone. In the best case it goes round the engine and just leave a big dent in the nacelle. Next is the bird going through the cold stream (bypass) portion of the engine. The worst is it passing through the hot parts, if it goes through the hot part then there's generally nothing to retrieve but it creates a stink. It's also quite likely to cause some pretty severe damage to the internals.
If it passes down the bypass duct then there's usually something to recover. The last one I dealt with managed to smash holes in the acoustic paneling behind the fan blades for a good 30% of the circumference. It left various bits of bone and feather embedded a good inch or two through an aluminium honeycomb, simply fish them out and stick them in a plastic bag. There were also feathers and bone stuck in various parts of the spinner. Then post said bag to some expert who can tell what species it was. IIRC, the last one I dealt with was some sort of Afghan species around sparrow size, I think the largest bit we fished out was a piece of bone about an inch long along with a some feathers and smaller bits of bone. The rest of the bird had spread across a bulge in the turbine casing where the heat had baked the remains onto the metal. We had to take apart the LP compressor in order to pull all the bits of bird from the casing and make repairs.
I've never worked with turboprops, but in theory it could do the same damage but it's a smaller intake with a whirling propeller in front that would tend to fling the bits outwards and away from the dangerous bits.
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 Spring chicken to ****ehawk in one easy lesson.
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RE: THE THREAD!!! - 
I once say a seagull really screw up and smashed into the radiator of the car in front of me! 
What woulf PETA say? Or Lacrimosa? 
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