[pilom]

Unfortunately #2 is extremely unlikely to be true. Engine failures are very related in very unexpected ways. The SpaceX guys have worked very hard to make them as independent as possible but with so many failure modes it is impossible to say that an engine failure (i.e. explosion) will have no impact on its neighbors.

[neurotech1]

Actually, in the NAS Oceana F/A-18 crash, two different engines failed for different reasons. The first one was a right engine compressor failure, the second was an apparent afterburner blowout. A twin engine jet crashed as a result.

[pilom]

Do you have a primary source? I'm genuinely interested in the report if it is available. Google just gives news stories saying "OMG a plane crashed into an apartment building!" which isn't helpful to the engineer in me.

[neurotech1]

Here is the mishap report http://goo.gl/GuHG5 I mentioned this because double engine failures due to separate causes do actually occur, although rarely.

Short version: The right engine compressor failed due to apparent fuel ingestion, causing a major over-temp. The noise was mistakenly attributed to a blown tire, so the pilot left the gear down. This required MAX Afterburner on the remaining engine to recover, except the engine had a afterburner blowout, and didn't provide MAX power and the jet departed controlled flight due to low speed.

[pilom]

Thanks for the report. A really interesting read for the engineer in me. Under "primary cause analysis" on page 18 of the report (pg 24 of the pdf) it says that they may have actually been related:

In summary, after the right engine failed due to fuel ingestion, the left engine had to push some air over to the non-functioning engine (for cooling I assume but it isn't stated). When the left engine afterburner did not light, it's "relight logic" did not trigger possibly because of the lower air amount. So the engineer who wrote the relight logic, assumed that the temperature would drop at a certain rate when the afterburner failed to light. Because the engine was working to assist the failed engine, that temperature drop did not happen and thus the afterburner did not attempt to automatically relight itself.

Sounds like it may be dependent after all.

[btilly]

Yup.

I invite you to create a toy model that takes that into account in some way and see what answers you come up with.