Posts about: "RAT (Deployment)" [Posts: 396 Pages: 20]

As is often the case "confirmation bias" is probably why he keeps trying to do the "reversion to authority" thing.
He has some other theory, and nothing to back it up, so continues to claim he can't see the obvious pattern in the data.
It's irrelevant, because there's really NO evidence to the contrary.
And by now, there's now FOUR solid pieces of evidence that the RAT deployed, so your analysis appears to be correct.
This includes the other "ballistic" analysis of the ascension, and subsequent descent, curve-- which indicates an approximately 100% loss of thrust from both engines.
In such a scenario, the RAT automatically deploys. Audio, visual, witness and classical physics all support the conclusion that, more likely than not, the RAT deployed.

The larger mystery, obviously, is the sight line through the swiss cheese that caused the chain of events resulting of Loss Of Thrust. We should hear the Preliminary within a month or so.

I've ground tested countless RAT's on 757/767's over many years....

Having just watched (or more importantly listened to) the latest video by Captain Steeeve on YT, I'm fully confident the deployed RAT can be heard

Not trying to be a smart ass, but how do you "ground test" a RAT?

Amen to that!

Now, if you and Kraftstoffvondesibel wouldn't mind conducting similar audio analysis of a moped whizzing past, that might help to dispel one of the most popular competing theories.

I appreciate the time taken to produce information that might help us advance our understanding. I am not qualified to mark your homework, but I can recognise that you have spent time on it, shown your workings, and self-reported the limitations. That sets you apart (from some) and earns my respect.

(I just hope you haven't been proven wrong in the time it has taken me to post this...)

Having followed this thread since the beginning, it is clear to me that this discussion is tainted by the fact that many contributors have MCAS and Boeing quality issues at the front of their minds.

I perfectly understand that, so no judgement from me, but it no doubt causes confirmation bias with conclusions being made about extremely improbable outcomes (dual engine failure at the same time during rotation/take off).

The RAT being deployed does not prove a TCMA-failure on both engines nor does it prove that both engines failed (its still not disproved or proven if it was manually deployed).

I was not aware that we have granular ADS-B data from the a/c itself showing airspeed post rotation (rather than speed interpolated from GPS). Apologies if I have missed it. If it does show acceleration after takeoff I tend to agree with you.

In no particular order, here are some more thoughts on TCMA having caught up on the thread:

If you cut the fuel from two big engines at take-off power, there must be some delay before n2 decays below the threshold for generation (below idle n2), the generators disconnect and RAT deploys. GEnx have relatively long spool up/down times as the fan is so large (and would be exposed to 170+kts of ram air). Perhaps someone has a view on how long this would be, but I imagine it could easily be 10s or more between fuel cut off and RAT deployment. On AI171 the RAT appears to be already deployed at the beginning of the bystander video. That starts c. 13s before impact and around 17s after rotation. This does not prove anything except that the supposed shut down must have happened very close to rotation and could have happened just before rotation while the a/c was on the ground.

As a thought experiment, imagine if ANA985 in 2019 had decided to go around. The a/c rotates and is ~50 ft above the runway, suddenly both engines spooling down, very little runway left to land on and no reverse thrust available. I am struck by how similar this scenario is to AI171. This theory would require there to have been unexpected thrust lever movement in the moments before rotation - but plausibly one pilot moving to reject, followed by an overrule or change of heart - or even a simple human error such as the recent BA incident at LGW - could achieve this. This is perhaps more likely that any sensor fault that you would expect to only impact a single engine given the redundancy of systems.

Tdracer writes that a key requirement of TCMA is to identify an engine runaway in the event of an RTO, in order to allow the a/c to stop on the runway. This will have been tested extensively - it is a big leap to imagine a false activation could be triggered. It did happen on ANA985 but through a very unusual set of inputs including application of reverse (albeit this latter point may not be relevant if TCMA logic does not distinguish between the reverser being deployed or not).

Incidentally there is an assumption the TCMA software version in place on the ANA flight had already been patched and fixed on AI171. That probably is the case but I am not sure it is a known fact.

In summary I remain baffled by this tragic accident. I have not yet read anything that explicitly rules out TCMA activation and it remains a possibility due to the vanishingly small number of factors that could shut down two engines at apparently the exact same moment when they have fully redundant systems. Fuel contamination, for example, has typically impacted each engine a few minutes (at least) apart. I am also cautious (as others have pointed out) of a form of confirmation bias about Boeing software systems with four-letter acronyms.

In my mind the cause could equally well be something completely different to anything suggested on this thread, that will only become clear with more evidence. All of the above also incorporates a number of theories, i.e. that there was an engine shutdown - that are not conclusively known.

Thank you to the mods for an excellent job.

This doesn't make any sense. The plane was in the air for approximately 30 seconds, the plane stops climbing around 12 seconds after take off, and the noise of the RAT is heard 11 seconds before the plane crashes - even if we assume the RAT both deploys instantly and deployed the exact moment that video began recording, that only gives the pilots a 7 second window to perform an action that results in it being deployed.

There just isn't enough time for the RAT to be deployed as a result of any action by the crew, IMHO. And to demonstrate how long 7 seconds is - that's enough to say 20 words, assuming no interruptions .

If you read the thread, you would know:

The RAT was almost certainly deployed. 4 different sources.
The Flaps were not retracted. Visible at the accident site plus many other sources agreeing they were indeed down.
APU will autostart when all engine power is lost. Potentially explaining why the inlet door was open or partially open at the accident site. Mentioned in several previous posts
On a 787-8, the main bogies tilt as the 1st action of the gear retract sequence. As stated in previous posts. I don't think this happens unless gear is selected up. So the conclusion was, gear was selected up. One caveat, IIRC, there was some discussion around a failure could have caused the bogies to tilt without Gear up being selected but I don't recall the outcome.
As for the Air France remark, un-necessary IMHO. Let's respect the crews please.

OK, I promised some informed speculation when I got back, so here goes:
Disclaimer: never worked the 787, so my detailed knowledge is a bit lacking.

First off, this is perplexing - especially if the RAT was deployed. There is no 'simple' explanation that I can come up with.

GEnx-1B engines have been exceptionally reliable, and the GE carbon composite fan blades are very robust and resistant to bird strike damage (about 15 years after the GE90 entry into service, I remember a GE boast that no GE90 (carbon composite) fan blades had needed to be scrapped due to damage (birdstrike, FOD, etc. - now that was roughly another 15 years ago, so is probably no longer true, but it shows just how robust the carbon composite blades are - far better than the more conventional titanium fan blades).

Not saying it wasn't somehow birdstrike related, just that is very unlikely (then again, all the other explanations I can come up with are also very unlikely ).

Using improper temp when calculating TO performance - after some near misses, Boeing added logic that cross-compares multiple total temp probes - aircraft TAT (I think the 787 uses a single, dual element probe for aircraft TAT, but stand to be corrected) and the temp measured by the engine inlet probes - and puts up a message if they disagree by more than a few degree tolerance - so very, very unlikely.

N1 power setting is somewhat less prone to measurement and power setting errors than EPR (N1 is a much simpler measurement than Rolls EPR) - although even with EPR, problems on both engines at the same time is almost unheard of.

The Auto Thrust (autothrottle) function 'falls asleep' at 60 knots - and doesn't unlock until one of several things happens - 250 knots, a set altitude AGL is exceeded (I'm thinking 3,000 ft. but the memory is fuzzy), thrust levers are moved more than a couple of degrees, or the mode select is changed (memory says that last one is inhibited below 400 ft. AGL). So an Auto Thrust malfunction is also extremely unlikely. Further, a premature thrust lever retard would not explain a RAT deployment.

TO does seem to be very late in the takeoff role - even with a big derate, you still must accelerate fast enough to reach V1 with enough runway to stop - so there is still considerable margin if both engines are operating normally. That makes me wonder if they had the correct TO power setting - but I'm at a loss to explain how they could have fouled that up with all the protections that the 787 puts on that.

If one engine did fail after V1, it's conceivable that they shut down the wrong engine - but since this happened literally seconds after takeoff, it begs the question why they would be in a big hurry to shut down the engine. Short of an engine fire, there is nothing about an engine failure that requires quick action to shut it down - no evidence of an engine fire, and even with an engine fire, you normally have minutes to take action - not seconds.

The one thing I keep thinking about is someone placing both fuel switches to cutoff immediately after TO. Yes, it's happened before (twice - 767s in the early 1980s), but the root causes of that mistake are understood and have been corrected. Hard to explain how it could happen (unless, God forbid, it was intentional).

Not 757 - it was a 767. Second time it happened in about 12 months.

Determined to be an ergonomics problem with the switch layout in the flightdeck.

Early 767s (JT9D and CF6-80A) had a supervisory "EEC" (Electronic Engine Control - Boeing still uses "EEC" to identify what most people call the FADEC on modern engines). The procedure if an EEC 'failed' was to switch both EECs off (to prevent excessive throttle stagger - unlike FADEC, the engine could operate just fine with a supervisory EEC failed).

Problem was that the EEC ON/OFF switch was located on the aisle stand - right above the fuel cutoff switches. Turned out 'muscle memory' was when the pilot reached down there, it was usually to turn the fuel ON or OFF - which is what they did. Fortunately realizing what he'd done wrong, the pilot quickly restored the switches to RUN and both engines recovered. And yes, they continued on to their destination (RAT was still deployed since there is no way to retract it in-flight).

Previous event was with JT9D engines (United IIRC). In that case, only one engine recovered (second engine went into an unrecoverable stall), they simply came back around and did a single engine landing.

Realizing the ergonomic issue, the EECs were relocated to the pilot's overhead (retrofit by AD).

To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been a repeat of an inadvertent dual engine shutdown since the EEC switches were relocated. It's also very difficult to 'accidentally' move the switches as there is a locking detent - the switch must be pulled out slightly before it can be moved to CUTOFF.

Sorry but you are wrong. The RAT was basic on the 767 - every single 767 built has one. The Gimli glider deployed the RAT (1982), and the Delta dual engine shutdown out of LAX deployed the RAT.

Another hour spent sifting through the stuff since last night (my sympathies to the mods ). A few more comments:

"Real time engine monitoring" is typically not 'real time' - it's recorded and sent in periodic bursts. Very unlikely anything was sent from the event aircraft on this flight.

Commanded engine cutoff - the aisle stand fuel switch sends electrical signals to the spar valve and the "High Pressure Shutoff Valve" (HPSOV) in the Fuel Metering Unit, commanding them to open/close using aircraft power. The HPSOV is solenoid controlled, and near instantaneous. The solenoid is of a 'locking' type that needs to be powered both ways (for obvious reasons, you wouldn't want a loss of electrical power to shut down the engine). The fire handle does the same thing, via different electrical paths (i.e. separate wiring).

As I've noted previously, a complete loss of aircraft electrical power would not cause the engines to flameout (or even lose meaningful thrust) during takeoff. In the takeoff altitude envelope, 'suction feed' (I think Airbus calls it 'gravity feed') is more than sufficient to supply the engine driven fuel pumps. It's only when you get up to ~20k ft. that suction feed can become an issue - and this event happened near sea level.

Not matter what's happening on the aircraft side - pushing the thrust levers to the forward stop will give you (at least) rated takeoff power since the only thing required from the aircraft is fuel and thrust lever position (and the thrust lever position resolver is powered by the FADEC).

The TCMA logic is designed and scrubbed so as to be quite robust - flight test data of the engine response to throttle slams is reviewed to insure there is adequate margin between the TCMA limits and the actual engine responses to prevent improper TCMA activation. Again, never say never, but a whole lot would have had to go wrong in the TCMA logic for it to have activated on this flight.

Now, if I assume the speculation that the RAT deployed is correct, I keep coming up with two potential scenarios that could explain what's known regarding this accident:
1) TCMA activation shutdown the engines
or
2) The fuel cutoff switches were activated.
I literally can come up with no other plausible scenarios.

In all due respect to all the pilots on this forum, I really hope it wasn't TCMA. It wouldn't be the first time a mandated 'safety system' has caused an accident (it wouldn't just be Boeing and GE - TCMA was forced by the FAA and EASA to prevent a scenario that had never caused a fatal accident) - and there would be a lot embarrassing questions for all involved. But I personally know many of the people who created, validated, and certified the GEnx-1B TCMA logic - and can't imagine what they would be going through if they missed something (coincidentally, one of them was at my birthday party last weekend and inevitably we ended up talking about what we used to do at Boeing (he's also retired)). Worse, similar TCMA logic is on the GEnx-2B (747-8) - which I was personally responsible for certifying - as well as the GE90-115B and the 737 MAX Leap engine - the consequences of that logic causing this accident would be massive.

I hesitate to chip in in these accident threads. Keep them clean. However, as as a few comments above brushes my audio expertise, I will comment.

A very simple audio analysis give me this:
The 3 segments horisontally, are of different videos of B787s passing overhead/landing. The vertical drop you see is the doppler effect.
In other words, these are spectrograms over time which makes these distinctions easier than a simple static spectrogram.
1. B787 landing with RAT extended.
2.Air india crash
3. B787 landing without RAT


It's a 5 minute laptop job, and it would look much prettier and clearer if I spent some time with it, (Gain to color match, and spectrally match to compensate for microphone placement and type),
but it is 85% conclusive even when done as simple as this IMO.
(I do have legal forensic audio experience)
The RAT was out judging from the audio evidence. You can see the the equally spaced overtones of the propelller match when passing overhead resulting in the Doppler effect, the difference in length of the doppler is caused by distance and the slightly varying frequencies shown in the starting point is caused by a difference in speed. But the harmonic content match.
In the 3rd segment you see none of these overtones at all.

It was hard to let it go, so I spent a bit more time with the audio, using filtering and matching to see if I could be even more sure.

It's a pity uploading audio to this site isn't as easy as uploading photos, but I can say it took very little filtering and matching to make the Air India audio become nearly indistinguishable from audio taken of B787 with known RAT extended during landing.

I can't see it in the photos either, but in these circumstances the audio is a lot more trustworthy, and from my audio point of view RAT deployment is 100% confirmed.

In the off chance that the audio I borrowed from a confirmed RAT event was somehow faked, I plotted the technical data I could find of the B787 RAT (4000rpm, 2 blades) combined with a height estimate and asked the O3 model with deep research to estimate doppler shift and speed.
The result matches the above documented 270-200Hz (in one of the harmonics) Doppler shift observed in 1.7 seconds.

No, it would have looked very different in the analysis.

About the engine spool down not present in the audio:
I did not know engines spooled down that quickly if shut down in the air, I am not an aerodynamicist, but it makes sense it would happen with all the drag. I had a mental sound in my head from normal shutdowns, and action movies I guess.
That means my point about it being no spool down detectable in the audio really doesn\x92t matter.

Is there known numbers for timing RAT deployment or spool up? Because there is no sign of that either in the audio.

I will have a go at a few after take-off videos and use some alternative comparison techniques to see if I can say anything with certainty about any engine power being present or not.

My hunch, after analyzing a few landing videos with and without the RAT with the standard audio analyzers tells me the engines were at similar or below rpm/noise making level/thrust compared to a normal landing, and that they had already completely spooled down(which you guys suggest is to be expected to happen much more quickly than I thought, so maybe doesn\x92t say much) when the video with audio starts.

I have seen your previous posts about this, and I happen to agree. Visually, as a lay man non visuals expert, I am in your \xabcamp.\xbb

However, the rat is small, and the artifacts are plentiful. Small sensor, compressed video, compressed upload, zoom, it is in short an awful source.

However, the RAT is a much better noisemaker, and the audio signature is much more obvious than it’s visual appearance in this case, and though the recording isn’t fantastic quality, there was more than enough information there to objectively conclude the RAT is out. And that is my professional, on the weekend, opinion.

I want to ask a pretty frank question for all of you, and I hope it is ok, from an audio specialist non-pilot:
Provided the engines spooled down. Provided the RAT is out. (There are no explosions, no bird strikes.)
Isn’t software and previous electrical failures a red herring too?Would anything but a complete fuel shut off lead to this result? That still leaves everything from the Fate is the Hunter plot, to Airbus A350 center consoles and Alaska 2059 open as root causes.

I realise the discussion has largely moved on, but for completeness I have analysed, filtered and compared the audio from several 787 videos\x97both take-off and landing (the latter with and without RAT deployment; take-off footage with the RAT out is rare).

Using the same style of frequency plots employed in the RAT analysis\x97and drawing on speed of different engine components data supplied by other contributors\x97it is straightforward to identify the engines\x92 high-power acoustic signatures objectively, despite variations among clips and the presence of Doppler shift.

What is clear is that the engine noise in the recording bears no resemblance to a typical 787 take-off profile. Whether the engines were merely at very low thrust/idle or fully windmilling I cannot say with certainty, but they were certainly nowhere near take-off power.

Make of that what you will.

The audio analysis in this case isn't anything obscure or vague. The same software is used in courts all over the world every day. You can be pretty sure the same software in some iteration is used investigating CVRs all the time. It shows something emitting the exact same sonic signature as a B787 RAT went over the camera at the same speed as the Boeing 787 seen going over the camera. It isn't a broken fanblade, or a motorcycle passing by, that would give a completely different result. It literally means hundreds of thousands of datapoints fall into the exact same pattern. If it were anything else, that would be easy to observe. It is a much more accurate tool than watching heavily compressed video. It is the same software used in hollywood to surgically remove airplane noises from historical dramas, btw. At least until AI came along and took on that job about 2 years ago. . Just because you aren't familiar with it doesn't mean it isn't accurate.
Just putting this out there, since many might be unfamiliar with this, you included.

I don't believe I owe you anything, I believe this is done adequately previously and has already taken up enough time on this thread. I am of the opinion that we have shown the RAT being deployed satisfactory enough to be of use for speculation in this thread. I find repeated comments about the bad video being the only evidence a bit disrespectful, though. Even from a mere physicist. It is based on a spectrogram over time. The source file shows audio up to about 16 kHz, it is unknown whether this limitation is in the file format (ie. 32kHz sampling rate) or microphone. Doesn't matter much. The frequencies above 16kHz is not important in this context as it is not where the sound energy is anyway. The audio will have been lossy data compressed, but it does not affect these prominent properties of the audio. It does make me hesitant to draw conclusions from the parts of the spectrum with more broadband noise and several intersecting sounds. Noise floor suggests 16 bit sampling depth. Spectral resolution? N/A All samples are included. The spectrogram covers the entire frequency range recorded, It shows comparatively the same overtones of the fundamental expected from the technical specifications of the 2 bladed RAT running at it's intended RPM, the doppler characteristics fits completely with a reasonable range of passing speeds and distance to the passing source plotted out. Compareatively, All the harmonics are identical both in pitch and seperation to a recording of a known B787 landing with RAT deployed, while the Doppler fall shows a longer time frame in the landing video taken from a further distance. As expected. The overtones easily discernable in this recording falls in the 220-2700Hz range. Below that, there is other noise centered around 150Hz, which gradually fades towards the end of the recording. This, as far as I can find in available information, fits with an idling or even windmilling B787 engine, but this is not conclusive. This falls in a range of the spectrum where there are other noise sources and the signal/noise is low and of a broader band characteristic, these masking frequencies is where the lossy data compression might play tricks, so I do not weigh that heavily. Recordings of landing B787 without the RAT, shows none off the same characteristics, and completely lack the tonal components and exact overtones shown with the RAT deployed. More importantly, compared to videos of B787s taking off with normal take off thrust, the latter shows distinct tonal elements, but with very different overtones,, both in separation and composition, again possible to relate to known quantities of the rotational speed and elements of the engine at high power. The AI recording shows none of this.

The latest techniques let us separate such things as reverbration from the source, when superimposing the reverberation/ambience and background noise of the AI crash urban environment on the clean, dead open field recording of the known B787 w/rat, they do indeed sound exactly the same to this very skilled and experienced listener. Although this is not courtesy of the computer analysis. It is just another angle of confirmation.

All in all, i think this source audio is excellent. The source is an iphone, their mems based microphones, although noisy shows great spectral balance and is comparable to basic measurement microphones of professional application. There is plenty of information to analyse from in this sample.

And again, I can't see it in the video either, and until I put on some really expensive headphones and fired up the software I was of a different opinion. I bowed to the science.

Edit: I took an extra look, I am prepared to say the fall off at slightly above 16kHz is from the original recording, this is probably a limitation in the microphone, as it is not a hard cut-off before a 16kHz Nyquist frequency as it would be with a 32kHz sampling rate, there is dither noise from 16-20kHz fitting with the source being 16 bit.

And this just highlights the difficult decision faced by moderators when trying to reduce noise on a thread because, without this additional supporting information , I too raised an eyebrow over the claim of hearing hundreds of RAT deployments.

NOT especially getting at you slacktide , indeed thanks for the followup and presenting your experience/reasoning, however, to assist everyone, including *relevant* background/support detail with one's post is to be encouraged! If you don't have this, or are just speculating from a position of little experience or knowledge, maybe the best contribution would be to sit on your hands for a bit and learn from others?

FP.