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Leonardo Times MARCH 2013W
hen I proudly tell friends about my internship at Rolls-Royce, often I get asked what an Aerospace Engineer would do at a car manufacturer. Or the comment that all those cars must have BMW engines by now. As a reader of the Leonardo Times you probably smile hear-ing this and I don’t have to tell you that the Rolls-Royce I did my internship at does not manufacture cars or engines for the automotive industry anymore, since back in 1973 the automotive division was sepa-rated from the company. At the time the Aerospace division was struggling as it had heavily invested in the RB211 engine, which was the first three spool engine and turned Rolls-Royce from a small player in the airline industry into a global com-petitor. Currently, Rolls-Royce is one of the largest manufacturers of large civil aero engines; engines that power the newest aircraft including the Boeing 787 Dream-liner, the Airbus A380 and soon also the Airbus A350 XWB.But did you know that’s not the only thing Rolls-Royce does together with its more
than 40,000 highly skilled employees? During my internship I worked within the Civil Aerospace division as a Development Engineer, but next to Civil Aerospace, Rolls-Royce has three other divisions; De-fence Aerospace, Energy and Marine. The company is a world leader for power in the onshore and offshore oil and gas in-dustry and does not only design turbine engines for use in air, but also on land. Next to this, Civil Nuclear is becoming a larger part of the energy division. This is not the first time the company is working with reactors though: Rolls-Royce pro-vides the nuclear propulsion for the Royal Navy’s submarine flotilla. To illustrate the size of this business, over 1,000 engineers play key roles in the design and support of the nuclear submarine propulsion plant. Rolls-Royce marine does not include only advanced propulsion systems, but is also encompassing vessel design. Indeed, a wealth of experience in ship, propulsion and power systems design has seen Rolls-Royce design more than 700 ships over
the last thirty years, many of them built for working in the world’s harshest areas. SPREAD YOUR WINGS
Since the beginning of my Aerospace En-gineering studies, Rolls-Royce has been the company I wanted to work for. Work-ing as a Development Engineer may how-ever not seem the first choice for someone like me, specialising in Aerodynamics. The Development department’s responsibility is to validate the engines to ensure their compliance with the engine and aircraft certification requirements. This proved to be an eye-opening experience. Working closely together with all specialist areas required combining all knowledge gained during my bachelors of Aerospace Engi-neering and proved to be a very challeng-ing multitaskchalleng-ing experience where every day was different.
It was certainly not a desk job and often I found myself down the shop floor dis-cussing parts to gain a better understand-ing of their functionunderstand-ing – and to gain an
Rolls-Royce is one of the most well-known brands in the world and synonymous with
the highest engineering quality. Amongst Aerospace Engineers, Rolls-Royce is directly
associated with the Trent turbofan aircraft engines. The engines power the world’s
newest passenger aircraft, including the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the large Airbus
A380. A Rolls-Royce powered aircraft takes off or lands every 2.5 seconds.
TEXT Jan Schneiders, MSc Student Aerospace Engineering
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE AT ROLLS-ROYCE
Internship Report
A taste of English culture
MARCH 2013 Leonardo Times
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appreciation for the many very large and very small components that make up a modern aero engine.
DERBY, UK
Rolls-Royce has many diff erent sites around the world. I was based in Derby in the United Kingdom. “Derby, ehmm, where?” was my fi rst thought. Derby, the city in which Rolls-Royce opened a factory as early as in 1907. I had to look it up on a map.
Derby is centrally located in England and is only one and a half hours by train from the London St. Pancras train station. It’s also only a short drive to the beautiful Peak District. A short drive along which you are continuously reminded that the English absolutely love very narrow roads, corners and roundabouts. And of course, that they drive on the wrong side of the road.
After a few phone calls to local letting agents, I had arranged some viewings in diff erent apartments around the city. On my second day in the city, I found a beautiful apartment right in front of the city centre’s cathedral. Already after the fi rst night in the fl at I had made my fi rst friend in the city – the cathedral has been greeting me for the past six months with a cheerful chime every fi fteen minutes.
I got used to the English manners soon after my arrival. Indeed it was nice to see people queuing up for a bus instead of crawling around its entrance. Also the healthy English breakfast quickly became a standard and delicious Saturday treat. One habit I could not get used to was drinking tea with milk. The English drink a lot of tea and the offi ce’s fridge was com-pletely packed with pints of milk. When I got a pack of milk at the canteen to drink straight from the pack, people would off er me tea – questioning why I was drinking just milk.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
I knew no one in the city of Derby upon my arrival. This quickly changed after the intern induction day – my fi rst day at the company. Almost all interns start on the same day in summer, making it very easy to meet new people and network around. As the main and almost sole reason for coming to Derby is to work for one of the big companies in the city – next to Rolls-Royce also Bombardier has a site in Derby for example – none of my fellow interns already knew their way around the city. Quickly the fi rst pub crawls were planned and soon everyone felt at home in the city. To facilitate networking even more and to provide an excuse for some more social activities, there is an International
Society. Many members of this more se-rious society are working at Rolls-Royce permanently for already quite some time, which allows for quite some interesting discussions during the socials.
SUMMER INTERNSHIPS
One thing that caught my eye during my stay in England was the vast amount of work experience many students in Eng-land have at renowned companies. Some students I met had already worked at a few of the world’s top companies over several summer internships – work expe-rience they gained already during their bachelors.
The summer internships are a very inter-esting opportunity to gain work experi-ence, while at the same time meeting many new friends abroad. Many compa-nies off er these relatively short ten week programmes during the summer holi-days. If you want to gain some work ex-perience during your bachelors, taking a look at the diff erent summer internships is certainly a great idea. A quick web search will give you an idea of the vast amount of possibilities. Indeed, Rolls-Royce also pro-vides the possibility to do a challenging summer internship. Keep in mind that ap-plications for summer internships usually open late summer and close by Christmas, so you will need to plan in advance.
Figure 1. It was impossible to miss the Olympic Games last summer in England. The torch being carried through Derby was one of the highlights.
