Rolls-Royce Spey

RR Spey RB.168 (Mk.202)

The Rolls-Royce RB.163 Spey is a twin-shaft turbofan engine from the British manufacturer Rolls-Royce that was developed in the late 1950s and first ran in 1964. It is mainly used as a jet engine for aircraft .

Aircraft engine

It is a smaller engine derived from the Rolls-Royce Medway, which was not in series production, and was developed for the Hawker Siddeley Trident . The initial thrust was 55.86  kN , and it was also used on the BAC 1-11 .

As a military variant (RB.168) and with an afterburner, up to 90.3 kN were achieved, it was first used in the Blackburn B-103 Buccaneer . In the USA a license production was started at the Allison Engine Company . The engine was named Allison TF 41 (F113) and was used in the Vought A-7 . It was also used in the British McDonnell F-4 . To do this, the fuselage had to be redesigned, as the Spey has a larger diameter than the General Electric J79 . A simplified and less powerful version (44 kN thrust) was the RB.183, originally called "Spey Junior", which was used in the Fokker F.28 .

The Spey is still in production today (2004). The last variant is the Spey 807 with an increased bypass ratio. It is used on the Embraer AMX . A further development of the Spey with a larger "fan" (brass) and further improvements is the Rolls-Royce Tay engine.

A total of 2,768 series engines have been manufactured since 1968. The Spey is considered extremely reliable. It was the first aircraft engine with an MTBO of 10,000 hours.

Technical specifications

		Spey 807	Spey 250/251	Spey 202/203/205
Thrust (kN)		49.1	53.4	91.2 / 98/120 (with afterburner)
Bypass ratio		0.93	0.64
Pressure ratio		16.3	20.2	16.9
Length (mm)		2456	2972
Diameter (mm)		826	826
Empty weight (kg)		1114	1243	1856
compressor	ND levels	4th	5
	HD levels	12	12
turbine	ND levels	2	2
	HD levels	2	2
Combustion chambers	10	10

Other uses

The Rolls-Royce Spey engine is also used for the Gulfstream II and the Gulfstream III (private & business aircraft).

The Dutch navy used Aeroderivatives type Spey SM1C in their frigates Karel Doorman class . For use in the frigate of the type 23 of the Royal Navy modified Spey engines come up with a shaft output of 19.5 MW are used. This engine is manufactured under license as the Kawasaki SM1A in Japan .

It also served as a drive in the world's fastest land vehicle, the ThrustSSC .

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• Analysis of various engines (English; PDF file; 3.26 MB)

Web links

Commons : Rolls-Royce Spey  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• The Spey engine on the Rolls-Royce homepage (English)
• EASA-TCDS-E.064 (PDF; 192 kB) - Type certification of the "Spey" series