{"id":528794,"date":"2010-04-15T14:12:27","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T18:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gereports.com\/?p=6056"},"modified":"2010-04-15T14:12:27","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T18:12:27","slug":"how-it-works-ge%e2%80%99s-experts-on-volcanic-ash-jets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/528794","title":{"rendered":"How it works: GE\u2019s experts on volcanic ash & jets"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span>With thousands of airplanes grounded across Europe due to the eruption of a volcano beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier yesterday, we\u2019ve reached out to two GE teams to help explain the danger that volcanic ash presents to jet engines. In the audio clips below, we first get the perspective of GE Aviation\u2019s Leslie McVey, an engineer and one of our commercial flight safety investigators working on everything from bird strikes, to weather events to the rare cases of volcanic ash. We also talked to Narendra Joshi, who works on advanced propulsion systems at GE Global Research, to get a perspective from the lab.<\/p>\n

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\nSteer clear:<\/span> \u201cIt just looks like a normal cloud to the crew,” says Leslie about volcanic ash plumes in general. “They can\u2019t tell that it\u2019s ash as opposed to a normal cumulus cloud.\u201d And, as MarketWatch.com<\/span><\/a> notes, when it comes to volcanic ash, \u201cvisibility is not the issue, as all aircraft are equipped with systems allowing them to navigate through heavy clouds. The fear is that the tiny particles of rock, glass and sand in the ash could jam engines.\u201d Photo: Icelandic Coast Guard.<\/div>\n

As Leslie says about the ash in the audio clip below: \u201cIt goes through the combustor and it melts — becomes a liquid — and as it exits the combustor, it starts landing on metal surfaces and re-solidifying.\u201d
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\"Listen<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/GEREPORTS_WEBONLY><\/p>\n

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\nLeslie McVey<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nNarendra Joshi<\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cAsh can [also] clog up the very fine cooling holes that are used in the turbo-machinery to keep the components cool in a very, very aggressive, hot environment,\u201d says Narendra in the audio clip below. \u201cSo if you plug up those holes, then there\u2019s a second level of problems\u2026 that will affect the machinery down the road.\u201d
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\"Listen<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\nPlane scary:<\/span> Iceland\u2019s Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull Volcano burst into life for the first time in 190 years on March 20, 2010, according to NASA\u2019s website. This image was acquired on April 4, 2010, by the Advanced Land Imager aboard NASA\u2019s Earth Observing-1<\/span><\/a> (EO-1) satellite. Photo: NASA.<\/div>\n

* See a map of the ash cloud<\/a> in The Telegraph<\/em>
\n* Read CNN\u2019s coverage of the eruption<\/a>
\n* Visit NASA\u2019s page on the volcano<\/a>
\n* See more photos and maps in The Washington Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With thousands of airplanes grounded across Europe due to the eruption of a volcano beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier yesterday, we\u2019ve reached out to two GE teams to help explain the danger that volcanic ash presents to jet engines. In the audio clips below, we first get the perspective of GE Aviation\u2019s Leslie McVey, an engineer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4069,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}