Concorde's engines - Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 Mk 610-14-28 - were originally designed by Bristol-Siddley (later absorbed by Rolls-Royce) under the technical direction of Stanley (later Sir Stanley) Hooker. The company's first pure jet engine, the Olympus, featured a Bristol concept, the two-spool compressor. Olympus engines also powered the RAF's Avro Vulcan bomber and an Olympus engined English Electric Canberra twice broke the world altitude record.
A re-designed version of the engine was developed for the TSR2 aircraft - a victim of a political axe - and a further development, the mark 593, was developed jointly by Bristol and the French company Snecma to power the Concorde supersonic airliner. The Olympus in Concorde has more time at supersonic speeds than all the rest of the world's gas turbine engines put together. Concorde's Olympus engines produce static dry thrust of 31,000lb (138kN) a figure that increases to 36,280lb (161Kn) with re-heat. It has a seven-stage low-pressure section and seven high pressure stages.
Service
Concorde is scheduled to remain in-service well into the new millennium and, by that time, the basic design of both airframe and engines will be over 60 years old.
The re-heat on Concorde's Olympus engines is used for take-off and for the trans-sonic phase of flight. Once cruising speed is reached, the after-burners are switched off for supersonic cruise.
Notwithstanding their age, the Olympus engines are generally reckoned to be reliable and robust. Over the years, Concorde's have been extremely reliable although both Air France and British Airways have so-called hangar queens' used mainly for spares. Although it appears that this accident may have been engine-related, it remains to be seen what the precise cause was. While some Concorde's have experienced problems with delamination of the control surfaces (rudders and elevons) there have been remarkably few incidents involving the aircraft since a problem with bursting tyres was solved in the late 1970s.
On 2 March 1999, the 30th anniversary of Concorde flying, an average total 10 aircraft had flown 920,000h without serious accident. This total included considerably more than 600,000h at supersonic speeds, easily exceeding the total supersonic time of all other aircraft in the Western world.
Source: Flight Daily News
