Aerospace and defense tier manufacturer Triumph Group Inc. reported that its Geared Solutions business has a new long-term contract from General Electric to supply “thousands” of inlet gearboxes (IGB) annually for all three variants of the LEAP commercial aircraft engine. The specific value of the agreement and the number of IGBs to be manufactured were not detailed.
Those totals will likely be determined by commercial aircraft production activity, and the numbers of LEAP (the name is an acronym for "leading-edge aviation propulsion") engines required by aircraft OEMs.
In the performance of a turbofan engine, IGBs draw motor energy from the engine’s high-pressure compressor. The LEAP-1A, LEAP-1B, and LEAP-1C are high-bypass turbofan engines developed by CFM International and produced separately by each of the co-equal partners in that joint venture, GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines.
LEAP engines are installed in both the Boeing 737 MAX and Airbus A320neo narrow-body jets, the two highest-selling aircraft now in service. Together, Boeing and Airbus have order backlogs totaling about 10,000 aircraft for those twin-engine aircraft, to be delivered over the next decade.
GE’s manufacturing of LEAP engines is done at plants in Lafayette, Ind., and Durham, N.C.
Triumph Group will manufacture the IGBs at the Triumph Geared Solutions plant in Macomb, Mich.
"With this award, Triumph remains GE's preferred partner for inlet gearboxes in the single aisle market," stated Triumph Geared Solutions president Pete Gibson. "This extension is the result of Triumph's investment in production capacity and the Macomb team's quality, schedule, and cost performance across a wide range of gear and gearbox applications on GE engines.”
Triumph Group noted it has supplied over 25,000 gearboxes to GE over the past 35 years, for the LEAP and its predecessor CFM56 turbofan engines.
