Jean-Paul Ebanga is President & CEO of CFM International. This company is the creator of the CFM56 engine – one that has 540 million hours of operation and is regarded by many as the benchmark narrow body engine. Mr Ebanga talks about the successor engine, the LEAP-X and explains why they are confident the new engine will hit its numbers. Their confidence is clearly based on the awesome performance of the CFM56.
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Near the end of the interview you’ll hear talk about variable vanes – which leads to a bit of a hiccup in the conversation. To clarify, what we wanted to know was more about what Mr Ebanga said here in his formal address. Note the talk of fan blades that have some sort flexibility – this is quite revolutionary.
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Great interview!
1./ Higher temps can result in greater fuel efficiency, but also in greater NOx emissions. Any thoughts on that?
2./ Was the variable blade geometry comment an oops, trade secret, or a mis-translation of variable vane cooling?
Higher temps are going to be a tough one. The variable question – combination of oops and not using terminology he used in his presentation. I hope to get that item from his actual own words up later.
Thanks. Looking forward to it.
CFM are saying that they will use TAPS II combustor, which has low NOx emissions.