The Rolls-Royce RB.162 is a lightweight British

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, a ...

engine produced by

Rolls-Royce Limited Rolls-Royce was a British luxury car and later an aero-engine manufacturing business established in 1904 in Manchester by the partnership of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. Building on Royce's good reputation established with his cranes, they ...

. Developed in the early 1960s, it was specially designed for use as a lift engine for

VTOL A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-wi ...

aircraft but was also used in a later variant of the

Hawker Siddeley Trident The Hawker Siddeley HS-121 Trident (originally the de Havilland DH.121 and briefly the Airco DH.121) is a British airliner produced by Hawker Siddeley. In 1957, de Havilland proposed its DH.121 trijet design to a British European Airways (BEA ...

airliner An airliner is a type of aircraft for transporting passengers and air cargo. Such aircraft are most often operated by airlines. Although the definition of an airliner can vary from country to country, an airliner is typically defined as an ai ...

as an auxiliary boost engine. A smaller related variant, the RB.181 remained a design project only, as did a

turbofan The turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft engine, aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a portmanteau of "turbine" and "fan": the ''turbo'' portion refers to a gas turbine engine which ac ...

version designated RB.175.

Design and development

The RB.162 was designed to meet an anticipated need for a lift engine to power VTOL aircraft with the emphasis on simplicity, durability and lightweight construction. Development costs were shared by Britain, France and Germany after signing a joint memorandum of agreement. The engine featured

fibre glass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clot ...

compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Compressors are similar to pumps: both increase the pressure on a fluid and both can tr ...

casings and

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adapta ...

compressor blades to save weight which also had the effect of reducing production costs. The engine has no oil system, a metered dose of oil instead being injected into the two main bearings by the compressed air used to turn the compressor at startup. Although the RB.162 was a successful design, the expected large VTOL aircraft market did not materialise and the engine was only produced in limited numbers.

Development for the Trident

In 1966

British European Airways British European Airways (BEA), formally British European Airways Corporation, was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974. BEA operated to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from airports around the United Kingdom. The a ...

(BEA) had a requirement for an extended range aircraft to serve

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

destinations. After a plan to operate a mixed fleet of

Boeing 727 The Boeing 727 is an American narrow-body airliner that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavy 707 quad-jet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for shorter flight lengths from smaller air ...

and 737 aircraft was not approved by the British Government

Hawker Siddeley Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers and acquisitions as one of onl ...

offered BEA a stretched and improved performance version of the

Trident A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm. The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other mar ...

that they were already operating. This variant, the Trident 3B, used, in addition to its three

Rolls-Royce Spey The Rolls-Royce Spey (company designations RB.163 and RB.168 and RB.183) is a low-bypass turbofan engine originally designed and manufactured by Rolls-Royce that has been in widespread service for over 40 years. A co-development version of th ...

engines, a centrally mounted RB.162-86 which was used for takeoff and climb in the hot prevailing conditions of the Mediterranean area. The 'boost' engine was shut down for cruising flight. Some conversion was needed for the change from vertical to horizontal installation. With the RB.162 fitted the Trident 3B had a 15% increase in

thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that ...

over the earlier variants for an engine weight penalty of only 5%.

RB175 and 181

A design study for a

version of the RB.162 was designated RB175. Another projected derivative, the RB.181 was to be a scaled-down version of the RB.162 producing approximately 2,000 lbs of thrust. Seven of these lift engines were to power the unbuilt Lockheed/

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

CL-704

variant of the

F-104 Starfighter The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is an American single-engine, supersonic air superiority fighter which was extensively deployed as a fighter-bomber during the Cold War. Created as a day fighter by Lockheed as one of the " Century Series" of ...

Applications

Dassault Mirage IIIV The Dassault Mirage IIIV, also spelled Mirage III V, was a French vertical take-off and landing ( VTOL) prototype fighter aircraft of the mid-1960s developed and produced by Dassault Aviation. The Mirage IIIV was a VTOL derivative of an exist ...

* Dornier Do 31 * Hawker Siddeley Trident 3B *

VFW VAK 191B The VFW VAK 191B was an experimental German vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) strike fighter of the early 1970s. VAK was the abbreviation for ''Vertikalstartendes Aufklärungs- und Kampfflugzeug'' (Vertical Take-off Reconnaissance and Strike ...

Engines on display

*A preserved Rolls-Royce RB.162 is on public display at the

Royal Air Force Museum Cosford The Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, located in Cosford in Shropshire, is a free (currently, 2022) museum dedicated to the history of aviation and the Royal Air Force in particular. The museum is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, a non-departme ...

.RAF Museum Cosford - RB.162
www.rafmuseum.org.uk Retrieved: 27 January 2010 *An RB.162-4D is on display at the

Deutsches Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

. *An RB.162 is on display in the Foyer in the Department Of Engineering at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

. *A part-sectioned RB.162 is on display at the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust Collection, (Derby). *An RB162-86 (from Trident 3) is on display at the East Midlands Aeropark, adjacent to the East Midlands Airport.

Specifications (RB.162-86)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Gunston, Bill. ''World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines''. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. *Swanborough, Gordon. ''Air Enthusiast, Volume One''. London: Pilot Press, 1971. .

External links

Image of Rolls-Royce RB.162Cutaway drawing of an RB.162RB.162 article with images (French language)The Trident Preservation Society
- a 1963 ''Flight'' article on the RB.162 {{RRaeroengines 1960s turbojet engines RB162 Lift jet