Zulu Pods: The World's First Decentralized Lubrication System

Zulu Pods is the world's first decentralized lubrication system that combines the function of a reservoir, pump, and nozzle into a single, self-contained, hermetically sealed, packaged oil delivery system. The Zulu Pod is lighter, placed right in the working zone of the engine bearing or gear compartment, and meters the exact amount of lubrication for optimal performance.

Zulu Pods can be used for primary lubrication for limited life engines or backup lubrication during a loss of lubrication event.

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Transcript

00:00:03 okay um okay so uh hey good luck to everybody here um thanks for uh thanks to the SAE team for putting on a uh an awesome event my name is Rob slayen I'm co-founder CEO of zods this is Todd cier a co-founder and chief scientific officer uh here at Zulu pods Zulu we are on a mission to radically simplify mechanical systems architecture our pod

00:00:27 technology improves performance durability survivability for Next Generation mechanical systems and the next generation of military assets and weaponry Zulu pods was born the tide pod for the jet engine was born in July of 2020 shout out to uh my wife here Danielle slayen another co-founder um Danielle and my myself spent a lot of time at Pratt and wiy getting our hands

00:00:55 dirty and oily working on mechanical systems lubrication system design designed um for jet engines uh we were on a on a car ride to Orlando um my son and daughter two and three at the time were asleep in the back seat and we finally got some quiet time to talk and because we're both Engineers you know we tend to talk about weird things like mini jet engines that power drones and

00:01:21 missiles and we saw an opportunity where there was an opportunity to improve the the mechanical system and lubrication system design of those engines think about those engines like your car if your car only had to drive for a mile these things only you know because they're powering missiles and drones they they go for 30 minutes 15 minutes an hour your your car that would drive

00:01:42 for a mile we would design it very differently than your car today and so by putting oil in a pod um we were able to get rid of the rest of the lubrication system things like tanks and tubes and TOD will get a little more into how it works but we we were able to radically reduce the cost complexity of those of those engines along this journey what has also happened and we're

00:02:03 now under contract with the Army we've recognized in the market said hey this is a really good backup system for emergency lubrication um type of instances in the sky think about like these sprinklers in this building they go off when they need to go off our pods are able to go off when there's a loss of oil event in the sky and things like helicopters single engine fix wi

00:02:23 Fighters that's a uh um that's a big deal we realized though we needed to find a special engineer to lead our engineering team to be able to bring this to the market and so we were we started saying to ourselves let's go try to find someone like Todd um that we used to work with at Pratt and Whitney and we did one better we didn't just find a Todd but we actually found Todd

00:02:45 Courier and he's going to take you through the rest of of this presentation thanks Rob yeah so as Rob mentioned right through the process of uh taking and and simplifying mechanical systems packaging oil right creating this decentralized lubrication system we came to learn that there was a real opportunity to produce secondary lubrication systems so in Aerospace

00:03:10 design for helicopters uh these these uh systems right they have a very difficult challenge of being of needing to operate in the event that the main oil system fails and so when that happens the pilot only has a matter of minutes to make decisions so they have to decide what to do with the aircraft and if they they can't decide in that period of time where there isn't a successful uh way

00:03:35 out the the aircraft will actually crash in a matter of minutes and I'll I'll I'll I'll talk a little bit more about that but the engineering designer the team what they're left with uh often in these cases is well when you talk about a secondary system right something that's additive right right how how badly do you need that system and it's often a real challenge for the engineer

00:03:56 to make the decision based solely on what is the likelihood of this event going to happen or what is the cost complexity and weight especially when we're talking in Aerospace and so in your traditional secondary lubrication system right that's what's shown on the left here right you have a tank you have a pump you've got coolers you've got all these components that are then tied

00:04:17 together with a complex network of tubing right that often doesn't buy its way onto the aircraft because it is just too complicated so what Zulu pods is set out to do is to radically simplify that design and radically simplify how that that system operates and the way that we do that is by taking all of the items that you see on the left and Distilling that down to uh a single component which

00:04:42 is designed to hold exactly the right amount of lubrication that is required for the job and placing it uh very close to the mechanical systems or the parts that need to be um that need that that uh critical um that critical fluid to prevent failure from occurring and so we take and we these things are self- energized they're decentralized right so they can they they can power themselves

00:05:07 they're independent of each other um we can put things like oil fuel grease uh any fluid that you can think of right in these little pods um and then they will deliver that fluid independent of any centralized pump or centralized tank and so what does that mean right so when we think about the implications of that right we have the central I system which is your traditional design right

00:05:32 and something that we're all familiar with right these uh these ear pods right when they first came out they were designed to have this wire and often you know you stuff that in the bottom of your bag and you pull out and it's in this Tangled knot well that's very similar to what the outside of a of a jet engine looks like right they have these external components that are

00:05:51 typically centralized in nature they have a single tank a single pump also a single point of failure right in the Zulu pod design what we're looking at is is we're taking and we're saying we actually want to make these things self-contained right like Rob said this emergency sprinkler system where they are designed to supply um critical amounts of either coolant or lubricant

00:06:14 to the mechanical system that uh that it's it's designed for and they can be placed anywhere uh in within the aircraft hard to reach places um and they can they can be used to to alleviate some of the complexity and the challenge that the engineer has to face when deciding is this too complicated does this way too much as a secondary system to save lives and this problem is

00:06:36 not a hypothetical problem right so this is a thing that that has actually impacted people's lives right in this example here this is actually a loss of lubrication event where the aircraft didn't have a secondary system right the engineers had to make the tough call to say this is too heavy this is too complicated it's too costly and we're not going to add this to the system and

00:06:56 as a result of that 17 people lost their lives in the period of time that the pilot had to respond to this from the moment that the that they first determined that the main lubrication system failed was 11 minutes right so all of us who are going to be presenting today right we have a 10-minute presentation right so you know that feeling that you get when you're up here

00:07:14 and you have to give that talk right and you need to think on your feet and answer those questions that goes by in the blink of an eye when you think about that in the context of being in the sky right and you have a blinking red light in your face that says you need to do something you got to figure out what that light is and then um make a decision within 11 minutes to get to the

00:07:35 ground or else you you you will get there on you know without that that decision will be made for you right um that that is something that is that is critical and is the problem that that Zulu pods is focused on solving and so to close I'll leave you guys with a video of what Zulu pod sees as the future for how these systems can operate right no longer does the designer have

00:07:59 to make the decision between whether or not they need to include this system it becomes a no-brainer it's light it's Sleek it's easy to install easy to design and it doesn't uh it doesn't um it doesn't add weight to to to the system or complexity to the system in the way a full secondary system works so here you can see uh a standard gear train we're shown in Gold are our Zulu

00:08:24 pods right so we mentioned this idea of them being decentralized this is an image of what that looks like right each one of these pods are independent of each other they live in spaces on the aircraft and in mechanical systems that already exists we don't add weight uh our significant weight or complexity to that system and we prevent loss of lubrication right the when the main oil

00:08:46 pressure um is lost in this case where we deliver very small amounts of lubricant and we can provide the pilot with up to an hour of time right so the comparison here is a matter of minutes and an hour hour that gives the pilot enough time to land the bird safely and that's the mission of zulu pods is to take and make these things simple to make the the design decision easy for

00:09:08 the engineer and to save lives in the future any questions uh Sam is here with the microphone uh great presentation thank you very much uh one thing uh I usually because I used to be in testing did that system was that system tested in real life yeah so that's a great question as Rob mentioned we are under contract with the

00:09:47 Army now we've actually done um significant testing on this system so you know much of what we show here today you know from an engineering standpoint we'd call them cartoons right but these these systems have actually been made and tested so we've tested technology up to TRL level 5 um and we are actively working with all the major oems for driving this to T level six which for

00:10:10 those in the audience that's the Air Force metric to determine how ready the technology is to go into an aircraft right so TR level six is when you start installing them into the engine right so that's where we're that's where we're at with the technology how are the pods activated so the pods are activated with a series of different mechanisms um all of them

00:10:34 are patented mechanisms um the for the loss of lubrication system it can be an active uh um system right so there's actually a signal that is sent to the pods that that drives an activation it's a solenoid system that that is based but we also have temperature- driven um systems as well as vibration driven systems as well so uh we call them smart pods um they're actually fully

00:10:58 integrated into the unit where they're capable of of of um understanding the state of lubrication and then delivering lubricant based on the need excellent presentation I I I was curious what what percentage of crashes are due to a loss of lubrication do you have any idea on that that's a that's a great question do you have an idea Rob I don't have a I don't have a a

00:11:25 statistical number but it is one of those things where if it does happen it it's pretty much catastrophic um the cougar incident is a good example there's other ones there's been other incidents over the last couple decades where if you were to Google you would see that it's a lubrication or mechanical system related um event um on the engine side the engine there's 6

00:11:49 minutes um today's a standard is 6 minutes for loss of lubrication for the engine the transmission which lives more in the bird is 30 minutes um but the you know the Army looks at at that 6 minutes and saying that's way too way too short so um statistically don't have don't really know that number but it it has happened and when it does happen it's it's bad news and it is enough of a

00:12:11 problem that the Army is is very interested in this right they're they're investing significant money into solving it um thanks for the presentation I think it's um easy for us to all see how military applications might be pushing the envelope in terms of performance have you looked at what potential commercial applications there could be for this

00:12:38 technology we we have go we we have so uh uh one place that's very interesting is the wind turbine World um so uh we are actually we brought on a business development consultant from GE wind and he's kind of bringing us around to some different owner operators and some of the oems but reliability maintenance lubrication Rel Rel ated things are a a major issue around uh owner operators

00:13:03 not being able to run their wind turbines so um the short answer is yes we're looking at um even in Aerospace and defense we're looking at the commercial or civilian side we're also looking at where else can the technology go where at the end of the day it's all about preserving multi-million dollar assets right and um saving people's lives and you know in this case we're

00:13:24 very much talking about saving people's lives but the wind turbine world is a great example of where we're trying to make sure a multi-million dollar asset doesn't tear itself up or allowing owner operators to continue to run and um you know um make Power um so yeah we are looking at other commercial applications well thank you very much