Rolls-Royce (www.rolls-royce.com) has reached an important milestone within the Pearl 15 engine-testing programme, successfully achieving 10,000 test cycles (in over 2,600 testing hours).

The global testing programme includes tests under extreme icing conditions, massive water ingestions, lightning strikes and long-lasting ‘maturity’ runs — all putting the engine under enormous stress.

For the cold starts, the entire engine gets cooled to below -40°C — a temperature where the viscosity of the fuel is comparable to honey.

Even under those challenging conditions, the engine has to start and run up to take-off thrust without any disruptions. Water ingestion and lightning strike testing makes sure that the engine will not fail even when flying directly through the worst thunderstorms.

Thousands of gallons of water are sprayed at the fan for a period of 3min — much more than an engine would ever experience in service.

The company’s site in Dahlewitz, Germany, has already started to build the first production-standard engines and is preparing for the production ramp-up, while maturity testing is on track for a smooth entry into service at the end of 2019.

The engine received EASA certification earlier this year and was unveiled at the EBACE Conference in Geneva in May, in parallel with the new Bombardier Global 5500 and Global 6500 jets.

Both aircraft will be exclusively powered by the purpose-built Rolls-Royce Pearl 15 engine, which combines innovative technologies derived from Rolls-Royce’s Advance2 technology demonstrator programmes with proven features from the BR700 engine.