You're six miles in the air, traveling 900 fps and a 10-foot diameter fan spinning at 3300 rpm slings itself to pieces. Those bits are scattered all over hell and half of Georgia. And until they find them they'll have no idea what configuration those bits were in, much less what trajectory they left the airframe on, which stymies your Newtonian physics.
To: 2111USMC
"...Not sure why they think they need to find the parts."
Failure analysis. Would you pay $25 million for an engine that occasionally tears itself apart in flight and no one knows why?
They know why. The risk was in the design. There is no geared turbofan with required thrust for this size of aircraft (it would require 8 engines, off the top of my head).
Non-geared turbofans experience instability in the fan due to supersonic speeds of the fan tips. The resonant frequencies introduced under flight conditions sometimes result in catastrophic failure; history is evidence. Put simply: The compressor section is in conflict with the operating envelope of the fan section. Difficult to test for on an engine stand. I don’t think they’re going to be able to resolve the design deficiencies.
Enjoy your next flight. /s
Ironically, Boeing put its chips in smaller aircraft rather than a competitor to the A380 (which required enormous engines), but is still also experiencing engine problems on both the 787’s Trent 1000 & GEnx engines and the 737’s LEAP engines (Leap-1A and Leap-1B), technically for the same reason outlined prior.
Fascinating technology in development of the next-gen engines (safer, quieter, more efficient geared turbofan, aka GTF) and an interesting 30-year development story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aPIEsnKb6o
Engine problems aside - as well as Kapton wire harnesses - I may never fly commercial ever again after watching this on the 737NG (and the corresponding problems with regulatory oversight, i.e. FAA):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWxxtzBTxGU