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At a GE Aerospace investor event earlier this month, a Wall Street analyst asked a topical question. If GE were to abandon the Open Fan — the exotic open rotor design it is developing with its CFM International partner, Safran — what advanced technologies from that effort could be applied to future ducted engines?
As a GE Aerospace executive explained the company hasn’t yet reached the point where it is ready to define a product, CEO Larry Culp quickly chimed in. “Make no mistake,” Culp said, “we’re all-in on Open Fan.”
Culp’s comments at the investor event, which was attended by The Air Current, were part of the company’s broader attempt to blunt growing skepticism of its novel Open Fan design, currently the centerpiece of CFM’s next-generation technology development efforts.
Related: Airbus turns up the volume on planning for a clean-sheet single aisle
The unducted engine concept promises 20% lower fuel burn than ducted designs, but aircraft original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are wary of the challenges associated with integrating it onto an airframe. Ongoing heartburn that has accompanied the fragile and expensive latest generation of engines has also left the customer base uneasy about committing to a radical design from a single engine manufacturer for their next-generation aircraft — and no other engine OEM is currently (at least publicly) pursuing a competing unducted design.
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