The house that Jack built

If a fan blade of an aircraft engine breaks off in the course of a flight and shoots out of the engine casing, it might penetrate the aircraft’s fuel tank, which is something you wouldn’t want. So one of the most important tasks in the design of aircraft engines is to ensure that broken fan blades stay embedded within the engine casing and don’t fly out.
In the case of the powerful GE90-115 B engines that go into the Boeing 777, this vital piece of design was entrusted to the engineers at GE’s John F Welch Technology Centre (JFWTC) in Bangalore.
Jet engines are but one product the scientists at JFWTC are working on.
Originally conceived as a laboratory for basic research in plastics — an area close to the then chairman John F Welch’s heart — JFWTC’s mandate was expanded to cover research work required for all of GE’s businesses. This is, after all, the only research centre to which the chairman chose to lend his name — the one in Shanghai, set up two years later, is simply called the China Technology Centre and the one in Munich, set up the year after that, is called GE Global Research - Europe.
These research institutions are cost centres, spending $4 billion — around 2.5% of GE’s $163 billion annual revenues — every year. The Bangalore centre is providing GE a bigger bang for its R&D buck than centres elsewhere.
JFWTC currently has 3,000 engineers and scientists and plans are now on to expand the campus to make room for another 2,000.
21/09/07 Dibeyendu Ganguly/Economic times

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2007, General Aviation Sep 2007