Rolls-Royce (http://www.rolls-royce.com/) and Liebherr-Aerospace (http://www.liebherr.com/AE/en-GB/default_ae.wfw) have agreed to establish a 50/50 joint venture to develop manufacturing capability and capacity for the ‘power gearbox’ for Rolls-Royce’s new UltraFan engine.

The UltraFan is a geared design, based on technology that will be ready for service from 2025, and will offer an improvement in fuel burn of at least 25% compared with the first generation of Rolls-Royce Trent engines.

The power gearbox will allow the UltraFan to deliver efficient power over a range of take-off thrusts; for the highest thrust engines, each single gearbox will be capable of handling a horsepower equivalent to that
produced by more than 500 family cars.

The joint venture — located in Friedrichshafen, Germany — will provide production engineering for the power gear drive-train components. The components will initially be manufactured in existing Liebherr facilities, but as production volumes increase, the joint venture will look at options for creating a stand-alone manufacturing infrastructure.

Rolls-Royce will continue to lead the design definition and design integration of the power gearbox, as well as the testing activities.

Josef Gropper, Liebherr-Aerospace managing director, said: “We are thrilled to be participating in this exciting new engine demonstrator programme, which gives us the opportunity to break new ground and significantly enlarge our scope of activities.

"Due to our long-standing success in aviation gearboxes, our expertise in handling manufacturing challenges, and the Liebherr Group’s extensive competencies in gears for other applications, we will substantially contribute to develop manufacturing capability and capacity for the power gearbox.”

Rolls-Royce has started building a new power gearbox test centre at its Dahlewitz site (south of Berlin); this represents an investment of more than 80 million euros and has been partly funded by the Brandenburg government.