General Electric

How It Works

How It Works: The Dreamliner's Super-Efficient Powerplant

The GEnx engine, the powerplant of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, burns 15 percent less fuel than conventional jet engines by using fewer components and lighter composite parts. Flying in 2009, the engine will also be quieter and more durable

In a high-bypass turbofan engine like the GEnx, 90 percent of the thrust comes from spinning fan blades in front that draw in massive quantities of air and force it out in a ring around the engines center, or core. The GEnxs primary innovation is in its fan blades, which have been reshaped to move air more efficiently with fewer blades and are made of carbon fiber to save weight.

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Do The Locomotion: 207 Tons and 4,400 hp

GE's Evolution does 0-60 in 45 seconds, unloaded. Braking is a different story: A full-on panic stop takes half a mile.

They sit on a spur of test track outside General Electric’s locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylvania, panting and grumbling like two old lions half asleep. The ominous, muttering rumble is the sound of 8,800 horsepower at idle—24 cylinders with pistons big as buckets, turbochargers the size of washing machines, two V12 engines direct-driving alternators five feet in diameter.

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