Introduction to Aerospace Propulsion By Prof . Bhaskar Roy Prof. A.M.

Pradeep Dept of Aerospace Engineering IIT Bombay

Lecture 1
Prof. Bhaskar Roy:
This is a course on introduction to Aerospace Propulsion. This course is intended for the junior years of the Undergraduate Program in Aerospace Engineering and
this course introduces the various issues in fundamental engineering related to Aerospace Propulsion. The course will be taken by two of us. I am Prof. Bhaskar
Roy from the dept. Of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay. The course will be taken by Prof.A.M.Pradeep who is also from Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay
and throughout this course we will be sharing various lecture modules presented through this programme. It actually involves lot of topics. We will be presenting
these topics to you in various lecture formats and an idea of various lecture formats is given.
We will start off with Introduction to Propulsion which I(BR) will be taking. We will start off this with certain amount of history and the development of science
what we call propulsion. When it started it was not called propulsion, but today we call it propulsion. So how whole science of making human beings fly
developed is some of the things we will first try to look at in the history of Propulsion. Then how the concept of how jet engines came about and the various
formats of the jet engines that we have today were not there when jet engines first appeared. We will have a look at the various forms of jet engines developed in
the last 50 years and later on we will get into the science & technology of those developed engines.
Prof. Pradeep:
I along with Prof. Bhaskar Roy will be taking up this course on Introduction to Aerospace Propulsion. I would be covering some aspects of this propulsion course
which I shall explain in next few minutes. We will start with the basic concepts of Thermodynamics Aerospace propulsion Devices. We shall start with the basic
concepts of thermodynamics and why thermodynamics is the important part of Propulsion. Then some of the other important aspects like definition of SystemBoundary, Surroundings and how do you define certain Thermodynamic System which are very important for analysing Propulsion Systems. We will define
various equilibrium states and the State Co-ordinates and its parameters, the intensive and extensive parameters. Subsequently we are going to look at Energy
Interactions and different types of energy interactions like work and heat interactions and as well as quasi static as well as Reversible Process followed by NonReversible and Ir-Reversible Processes. This is where we are going to start with Thermodynamic Principles and we will continue with defining the laws of
thermodynamics which also plays an important role in analysing thermodynamic systems.
We will start with the Zeroeth Law of Thermodynamics which is the governing principle for defining the Temperature Scale as we shall see later on. Subsequently
we shall look about the First law of Thermodynamics and its significance which
is the Conservation of Energy. The terminology we shall come across several
times throughout this course is Internal Energy which is the outcome ofnd the 1 st Law of Thermodynamics. After this we shall 2 nd Law of Thermodynamics and a
very important
property which we come across as an outcome of this 2 law is the Entropy and the Absolute Temperature Scale. Followed by this we shall look
rd
about the 3 Law of Thermodynamics and Absolute Entropy. The thermodynamics of simple equilibrium, simple compressible Systems, the State Postulates and
the fundamental Principles associated with that will be covered. The thermodynamic potentials and the Jacobian and the Legender Transformations which lead to
the Maxwells Equations will be covered subsequently to the definition of thermodynamic systems. The derivation of thermodynamic Properties which are
followed by the Maxwells Law will be taken up. In terms of application of Thermodynamics we will be looking at closed and open systems, Polytropic processes
and Cyclic processes. In Cyclic Processes we are going to talk about different thermodynamic systems, basically Power Cycles, gas and Vapour power cycles. We
shall talk about various gas and power cycles which shall talk about the fundamental power cycles that are used in the thermodynamics systems. Further we shall
discuss about the Mixture of gasses and vapours and a little bit of details about 1-D Compressible Flow, Isentropic Flow, Flow with Friction and Heat transfer,
Normal Shock flows. These are the various topics that are required for understanding the various Propulsion Systems.
Prof. Roy is also going to discuss about some of the cycles in detail which we had seen earlier like the Otto Cycle which is the basic Cycle required for the Spark
Ignition Engine, the different IC Engines which are used for Aircraft Applications. We shall also be discussing about the Reciprocating Engine Performance,
Supercharging and the Propeller Speed Control mechanism and Gear Box. Propeller Fundamentals and Blade theory will also be covered by Prof. Roy. Prof.
Pradeep, I will be taking up the Cycle Analysis for Propulsion Systems, the ideal Cycle analysis for Propulsion Systems basically the Joules and the Braytons
Cycle which are the basic cycles of different Air Breathing Aircraft Engines. Introduction to Missiles & Rockets will be taken up by Prof Roy. He shall be talking
about Ramjets and Pulsejets, fundamental principles and the working of Rockets and missiles and the various Space Propulsive Devices and their Operating
Principles.
Text Books :
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Engineering Thermodynamics by P.K.Nag, Tata McGraw Hill.

Advanced Classical Thermodynamics by Emmanuel G, AIAA Ed. Series.
Mechanics and thermodynamics of Propulsion by Hill Philip, Peterson Carl.
Aircraft Propulsion by Bhaskar Roy
Elements of Propulsion- Gas Turbines and Rockets, J.D.Mattingly, AIAA Education Series.

More Reference Materials will be prescribed as the course progresses.

Prof. Bhaskar Roy:
Basic sciences involved in the field of propulsion are :
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Laws Of motion: are associated with the motion of Aircraft which is the important thing in this course
Laws of Thermodynamics: the creation of Motion and the propulsion systems are based conceptually on the laws of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics is the matrix on which the entire field of Propulsion is Concentrated on. So we need to know a lot about thermodynamics which will
be covered by Prof. Pradeep.
Principles and theories of Aerodynamics: Prof Pradeep will be covering the Aerodynamics. We need to know Aerodynamics because a lot of
Proulsion we deal in this course is based on Aerodynamics. Various Aerodynamics Laws, Principles & Mathematics need to be known. Many of the
components of Propulsion or Propulsive Devices works on the principles of Aerodynamics and many of them are called Aerodynamics Machines. So
many of the propulsive devices are known as Aero-Thermodynamics Devices. So we need to know both these sciences very well.
Mechanical Sciences: Deals with the mechanical Issues and a lot of Mechanical engineering in making propulsive devices and engines which basically
are Mechanical Entities.
Material Sciences: Issues related to Material and Metallurgical Sciences are dealt here. The propulsive devices use the Material Sciences of the highest
order.
Control Theory: Most of the devices of Aircraft Propulsion and Rocket Propulsion need to be controlled. These theories are extremely involved and
they are the sciences by themselves. Some of the issues of Control of the propulsive devices will be dealt here. These propulsive devices need to be
embedded with the modern control theories and control systems.

MOTION:
The propulsive devices that are created are trying to impart a continuous motion to the aircraft or spacecraft and not just a motion for a few seconds. Its continuous
motion that is required, so some fundamental sciences are required to apply to these Propulsive Devices which govern the motion of various bodies. Newtons laws
of Motion codified various concepts of creating continuous motion and these motions are what we are concerned about in this course. Before the Newtons Laws
of Motions came into being, the concept of creating motion through various kind of understanding of motion was actually applied. For example: paddling the oars
to make the boats move in water uses instinctive understanding of basic principles without the application of the laws of motion. The question of understanding the
motion has been there for more than thousands of years and Newton codified those laws in the form of Physics or Mathematical Laws and making it easy for us to
create Propulsive devices using the sciences and laws.
TYPES OF MOTIONS:
Perpetual Motion: It is not physically possible but it has been possible because of the various laws of Physics and Mathematics that has existed and they have
proved that its not really possible to create Perpetual Devices. We have to have devices that create motion on continuous basis. A motion cannot be sustained on a
continuous basis but a device has to be created that on a continuous basis of producing perpetual motion. In our case it deals with the creation of Perpetual motion.
And this continuous production of force is what is necessary we have to provide through the propulsive devices. This course deals with whether a continuous force
can be provided for continuous flying motion.
Some of the earlier methods that used to provide continuous forces for providing continuous motion started some 2000 years back.
1.

One of the devices that were developed was Aeolepile designed by Hero in 2nd century BC. He demonstrated a particular device in which if steam
is put in and allow the steam to come out through Jets in Opposite Direction, then continuous motion can be created of a ball. This ball can be
held on together on the both sides which can provide a rolling motion to the ball. This was called Aeolepile. About 1800 years after this, William
Avrey designed this Ball which is shown in the picture on the right side. During the time of Hero, there was no Newtons Law to develop this
idea. Hero developed this Aeolepile based on his instinctive understanding.

2.

Around 13th Century, the Chinese Scholar Wan Hu decided to try and create a Flying Motion. Since China is very good in making Gun Powder
and Fireworks, they had the concept of making small rockets through the Fireworks could be made to fly. Wan Hu as a scholar thought was that
if number of rockets were put together and fired them up together, then the object could be made to fly. He made a chair which consisted of
number of rockets attached to the under of the chair and firedththem up together so that a vertical flying motion was produced. It was one of the
first attempts to make human being go up in the air in the 13 century. But we do not know if that story is true because the picture shown is an
artists drawing.

3.

The next invention was from Leonardo Da Vinci, who is regarded as the genius of the millennium. Around 16 th century he created what is now
known as a Chimney Jack, which the hot air rising up from the chimney creates a motion of the turbine and this rotating turbine was used to
drive number of elements like Gear Box, Belt and Pulley Drive and other motions. He used the hot gas of a chimney to make a Turbine. This was
one of the first methods developed conceptually to make a turbine through the hot gas or hot air. Subsequently around that Wind Turbines were
being created around the world which used the natural air to rotate the Turbine. However, the most important contribution of Leonardo Da vinci
was the Ornithopter which is a machine that actually could make human beings fly. His idea was to create a small platform in which the human
being can sit or lie down and it would have something like a Helicopter which will have a Vertical Motion similar to a Screw Motion and the

whole device would rise up in the air using the Screw Motion of the air. This was his concept of ornithopter which he never made but was only
conceptualised by him. Da Vinci also created the Flapping Wing concept which is actually a copy of the motion of Birds Flying. Da Vinci
thought if we could imitate the Mechanical Motion of the Bird Flying then human beings could also fly like birds. He noticed as an avid scientist
and as an engineer that flapping wing contributes to the flying motion of the birds. So he created a small conceptual machine in which he thought
could have flapping wings which if could be flapped could aid the motion of this craft. The Picture shown represents Da Vincis Ornithopter.
Whether the machine was made is not sure. As a concept nothing was wrong with it and today lot of people talk about the flapping wing concept
as one of the modern aids of making a new aircraft or a small aircraft.
4.

The problem was not just making an aircraft but also powering the aircraft. In order to power an aircraft, it is necessary to have Engines. When we
talk about Propulsive Devices, we are talking about having Engines embedded inside it. This engine works on the principle of thermodynamics as
we have seen, but Mechanical Sciences also come in the process of propulsive devices involve number of elements. Nearly 400 years back,
Giovanni Branca came up with the idea of a Jet Turbine. Those days creating Steam was a known thing. So if we boil a large beaker and create
Steam and allow the Steam to come out like a Jet impinging upon a turbine which is held on a vertical shaft to create a Rotary Motion. This
Rotary Motion can be transferred through the Gears to the Shaft. This Shaft can be used to run the Propeller. The entire device is geared towards
producing a Rotary Motion which is connected to a Propeller to run the propeller. It is then this propeller which produces the power to the aircraft
to fly through the air. This was the concept of Jet Turbine. At this particular time the people were more bothered about creating an engine in which
the propeller could be powered and supplied with continuous power thereby
allowing the propeller to produce continuous Propulsive Force which
would aid the aircraft to fly on a continuous basis. This was one of the 1st devices that were able to produce continuous motion.

5.

Then came the Newtons concept Steam Wagon which is shown in the picture. His concept was if you just create a Steam jet out of a large
Beaker which is heated out from the bottom by means of some heating device. If the steam that comes out is made to come out of a Nozzle like
part, then the Steam jet would aid the process of movement of wagon. This was Newtons Steam Wagon. This was just a sketch and was never
made. This would actually never work because the amount of force required moving the wagon would have been impossible to create through
such Steam Wagon. However as a sketch and as a concept it provided some ideas to the people who came down the line. We will be talking about
the Newtons Law of Motion in a few minutes from now.

6.

Then the ideas of creating Steam and using the Steam to create a Continuous Motion was followed up by Barber and he created Steam Driven
Compressor Turbine. This is the precursor to what we call Jet
Propulsion today. He created this model about 200 years back as a whole in the
backyard using a Chain pulley System. This was one of the 1 st contraption in which engineering was used along with the concept of Steam Force
which is used to create a Continuous Power generating unit.

NEWTONS LAWS OF MOTION:

These laws of motions govern any motion that occurs on earth like the motion of an aircraft or the motion of an automobile. They have to conform to these laws of
motion and when these crafts are created they are made to conform to these laws of motion.
NEWTONS 1ST LAW:
It states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force. An object in continuous motion with the same speed and in the same
direction unless acted upon by an external force. This law is often called as the Law of Inertia.
This means that the body maintains the state of Inertia which could be the State of Rest or the State of Motion and it will continue in the state of rest or motion
unless acted upon by some external force. This external force needs to be applied. This external force is very essential to aid the continuous motion of an aircraft.
If continuous source of Power and force is not available then continuous motion is not possible either in air or anywhere else. This law is established within the
Newtonian Frame of Reference which means that we are talking about the Newtonian Bodies and the motion we are talking about are Newtonian Motion. We have
to understand from the point of view that some of the concepts here may not be exactly accurate if you bring in the modern Theory of Relativity. In Theory of
Relativity the State of Rest and the State of Motion are defined slightly differently. So we are entirely concerned with the Newtonian Motion only and not the
Theory of Relativity in this entire Lecture Series. Even for a Spacecraft, we will not be talking about the motion of a body using Theory of Relativity as a law of
Physics. We will always be in the Newtonian Frame of Reference.
NEWTONS 2ND LAW:
It states that acceleration is produced when the force acts on a mass. The greater the mass of the object being accelerated the greater the amount of Force needed
to accelerate the object.
Creation of the motion is itself a kind of acceleration. When you are starting from a state of rest, you need some force and that itself is a first acceleration that you
need to produce and it is codified simply as:
F = M*A
where,
M- Rest mass(definition of Rest mass is different from Newtonian Mechanics to the Relativity theory)
So this mass to be accelerated needs a force and this is what the 2 nd law motion states. Our work in Propulsion is to create this Force such that the motion can be
created.
NEWTONS 3RD LAW:
It states that for every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.
This law is very well known of all the laws and this is the important law on which the propulsive system is based on. This law tells that if you create an action then
there is bound to be an equal and opposite re-action. As the diagram illustrates, if an action is created to push a body then some amount of material is ejected from
the rear which the diagram illustrates. The act of releasing the material from the rear is the Action and the reaction is the force that propels the body forward. This
is the conceptst on which most of the Aircraft and the spacecraft is based on. This action
of releasing some material from the rear of the body which we want to
move is the 1 principle on which the propulsive devices are created on. Newtons 3 rd law serves as one of the basis on which the propulsive devices are created.
This was developed conceptually long back.
For example:
Shown in the picture, if you fill a up balloon and then hold the balloon in one hand and take your hand off and release the compressed
air or pressured air from
within the balloon to suddenly come out through the open lip, then it will create a nozzle as we saw in the illustration of the 3 rd law. This nozzle effect will
immediately create a Re-action. So the Action created by the release of air from inside through the open lip creates a force and that Re-action makes the balloon
move forward. If you do this experiment by yourselves in a room, you will find that the balloon is moving in a Zigzag motion. This is not because anything has
gone wrong with the balloon or the release of the balloon. The point is the balloon is always moving as a re-action to the action instantaneously through that lip. So
the instantaneous Re-action direction and the magnitude creates the instantaneous motion of the balloon. So the Zigzag motion you see is the correct Motion based
on the instantaneous vector of the action that is created. Re-action always occurs opposite to that vector.
This is shown in the lower diagram in the Aircraft example. If you are flying an aircraft and if you create an Action which throws something towards the back and
this something we shall see more and more is actually the air in which the aircraft is supposed to be flying. If you create an action of throwing the Air actually
backwards then the aircraft experiences the Re-action which is the motion forward. Our work in this course is to see how this action can be created through various
devices on a Continuous basis in a Controlled Manner, so that in a controlled manner we have the reaction and motion of the aircraft. We cannot allow the aircraft
to move in a Zigzag manner as we see in the balloon. We have to have a continuous, controlled, smooth motion of the aircraft and this smooth motion of the
aircraft needs to be done in a controlled manner. This controlled Action and Re-action needs to be created through the Propulsive Devices and there is a question of
integration of these propulsive devices with the aircraft. We shall be talking about more and more issues relating to this as we enter into the subject matter.
NEWTONS 1ST LAW:
Lets get into the Newtons 1st law in detail because that is what is going to create bedrock for our Subject.
It states that, if the vector sum of all forces acting on the object is zero then the velocity of the object is constant. This means that if the object is in a state of rest
it will be in its state of rest and if the object is in its state of motion then it will remain in its state of motion without experiencing any change in its motion. There
will be no acceleration, no change in velocity and no change in direction. For changing any one of the three mentioned previously, you would need to apply
force and this force will need to be applied in a certain direction. So the Vector Sum of all the forces is what we need to have our eyes on, so that the motion can be
created in a particular direction giving it a particular magnitude.
So creation of Motion is the 1 st thing in Newtons law and giving it a direction is the next thing. We need to keep our eyes open on both the issues that is creating
the motion, magnitude of the force we apply and the direction in which the force is applied because the Re-action will be based on both the magnitude and the
direction of the action that is created. Reaction will be opposite to that magnitude and direction.
NEWTONS 2ND LAW:
The second law states that the net force on a body is equal to the time rate of change of its linear momentum M in a specified reference of frame for the inertial
motion under interest.

The second law is mathematically codified as :

For a constant mass system we get,
where,
M- Linear Momentum in a particular direction.
m Rest mass
V- Instantaneous velocity
The 3rd equation above constitutes what we call as Force is the product of mass (m) and acceleration (derivative term) that was written down earlier. This signifies
that for moving a certain body of mass (m), a certain amount of acceleration is to be given which produces a Linear Momentum change thereby creating the Force
of Action and the Re-action is the motion of the aircraft forward.
Any mass that is gained or lost by the system will cause a change in momentum. That is not because of the external force. A different equation is necessary for
Variable-Mass Systems. This is the issue one has to talk about. The mass that we considered earlier was a fixed mass. If we have a Variable Mass System (eg.) :
Spacecraft, when the mass stored in the spacecraft is used and the mass changes with respect to time. So finally the mass flow will be different for a variable mass
system and the equation of Newtons Law will also be different for a Variable Mass System. Most of the time we will be dealing with constant mass system, but if
variable mass system is used then necessary equations are to be used.
Consistent with the Law I, the time derivative of the momentum is non-zero when the momentum changes direction, even if there is no change in the magnitude.
This motion is associated with the Circular Motion. This happens because the Instantaneous Velocity of the motion is always Constant, but it is continuously
changes its direction. This direction change requires a continuous application of an External Force. This is what is done when an aircraft or a Spacecraft is taken a
turn on its flight which may be either circular or non-circular. But the forces are to be applied to bring this change in Direction. The propulsive devices are needed
to bring a change in the direction of action, so that the reaction force makes the craft to change its direction. This implies the Conservation of Momentum. When
the net force on the body is zero, the momentum of the body is constant (zero or non-zero). The Net force is therefore equal to the Rate of Change of the
Momentum assuming there is no loss of energy anywhere. This is the fundamental principle on which the action- reaction works and this is what is required when
we create the propulsive devices.
Concept of Propulsive Forces of Flying Vehicles:
Newtons 2nd Law is the conceptual basis of the Propulsive Forces of all Flying Vehicles. Newtons 2 nd law is the law that is activated more inside the Propulsive
Device to create all the motions and the physics involved in creating the propulsive force. At very high speeds, the concept that the momentum is the product of
Rest Mass and Velocity is not accurate because we are talking about the motion of object around the speed of light according to the theory of Relativity. These
motions are not considered for the propulsive devices creation. We will be dealing with the propulsive devices that depends on the Newtons Laws, Newtonian
Fluid and the Newtons motion.
Impulse:
Impulse is the corollary of the force. It is defined as the force that acts over an interval of a small time dt and is given by,
This type of Impulsive force makes the Rockets, missiles and Space Vehicles move through the Space.
NEWTONS 3RD LAW:
It states that all forces are interactions between different bodies and thus there is no such thing as a unidirectional force or a force that acts on only one body.
The law states that every force has a Counter Force. The reaction force is very much important because it is the force that makes the craft move. If a body A exerts
a force on body B, body B simultaneously
exerts a force of the same magnitude on body A then both the forces will be acting on the same line. This represents the
action-reaction concept of Newtons 3rd Law.
Next lecture: Propulsive Devices created over the past century.
Introduction to Aerospace Propulsion
Lect-2
Today we will take you through the development process of aircraft propulsion. The early years of the development in which the various kinds of propulsive
devices were thought of . Some of them were actually created .-- some kind of prototype, but many of them never quite flew. And we -- go on to wright brothers
when the aircraft flew for the first time and what happened thereafter , all the aircraft engines actually developed over the years over a period of almost 150 years .
the first aircraft that flew was nearly 100 and 50 years back. That didnt fly actually but was created 150 years back . One of the creations was by Felix De Temple
De La Croix. Ah --- what was called a monoplane at that time and the early ideas were those that resemble that of a bird .this particular picture as you can see here.
It has wings very much like a bird a tailplane that resembles that of a bird and this is the body in which somebody or some things could be placed. you can see the
tail that again that resembles that of a bird and the side view which resembles almost that of a boat in which something or somebody could probably sit or be
placed over there and then of course you see the propeller . and this is the concept that was created nearly 100 and 50 years back. But to fly a craft like this you
would need a propeller like device to make it move in air. And this is the side view of the propeller which gives us the first impression of what mankind thought a
flight craft could possibly be and this was nearly 100 and 50 years back.the idea that you need to have thrust created by some kind of propulsor was created around
that time and it required that if an aircraft is flying the craft by studying the birds and many other such flying objects people realized that you need to create lift
and the idea at that time was you create lift by designing a particular kind of aircraft that typically would resemble something like a bird or one kind of bird or the
other. However to do that you need a certain amount of force to overcome what is also known as drag.And this is due to resistance of the air in which the craft
flies. When the craft is flying this resistance is continuously active on the body of the craft and this resistance of course also would change a little depending on the
mode of flight. and during these various modes of flight you need to create thrust that on a continuous basis overcome this resistance or air resistance and keeps
craft flying at certain predetermined speeds in a certain predetermined mode and this creates finally aircraft motion. Now unless you have this balance of forces,
the lift which would overcome the weight of the craft and a thrust created by a propulsor which on a continuous basis must overcome the drag its not possible to
fly. This is the minimum requirement for a craft to fly and our business in this course is to look at how a thrust is created by propulsor which propels the aircraft
through the air and various kinds of engines that create the propulsive power that finally creates the thrust. The early devices that were created but a wherein the
designers drawing board. One of them was by a George Cayley. Now George Cayley is quite often credited with being father of modern aeronautics and he
created much of the science that is used even today for understanding the aircraft flight. And what he created was a craft that looks something like this, ok and it
had a small boat again and a big wing which helps the creation of the lift. And then again a tail plane that is necessary like a bird to balance the flight. Now
something like this is what he conceived at the time of creating the science of aeronautics which is laid down in many books even today. A little later after that a
gentleman called Samuel P Langley created another kind of craft. Now this had two wings one above the other and is often referred to as a biplane as opposed to
the first one which is often referred to as a monoplane. Now monoplane had one wing each side so two wings on two sides this had four wings so two on each side
in a symmetric manner and this was a little later in late nineteenth century and this was what a first attempt to create something that could possibly fly. One of the
reasons one supposes that you need two wings was to create sufficient lift to make the craft balance the weight. And to do that they had to create two sets of wings
on each side and as a result of which you could also see there are two sets of tail planes at the rear which is not exactly what the birds do. But at that point of time
people had realized that you cant have a craft which exactly looks like a bird. You need to create something different and that difference is what appeared as a
biplane. Now Samuel Langleys biplane was attempted to be flown. However this particular attempt this picture shows that the first attempt at this flight was
unsuccessful and as soon as the craft took off from ramp on a water body it immediately thereafter crashed on the body. One of the reason possibly was that power
available was not sufficient for the craft to balance its drag in the air. As a result of which lot of people looked at various kinds of a oaring devices. And the device
that would finally propel the craft through the air and provide sufficient power on a continuous basis. Now this required them to look at creating engines that
would drive the propeller. By that time it was known that you have to have a propeller to make an aircraft move in air. The question was what kind of engine do
you require to make the propeller create sufficient thrust. Now one of the first attempt was by aLorin and he created what can be called kind of a jet engine but it
was based on the piston engine concept which was prevailing at that time, had already appeared in market. And this means that a piston would be moving like this
and would expel the gas as you know probably every second stroke and as a result of which this gas being expelled or ejected would create kind of a jet action
which again as per Newtons third law which we studied in the last class would give a reaction and provide the thrust which being that you would get a thrust
every second stroke of the piston. This was concept created by Lorin. And as result of that Lorin, what he did, he quickly realized that a single piston quite often
would not be sufficient to create sufficient thrust and hence he lined up six of them one after another in line. So that six of them could produce thrust also there is a
possibility that he could time the piston strokes such that they dont actually eject a hot gas simultaneously. It could be timed to eject them in a manner that only
two of them ejected one time or it could be timed in a manner that allsix of them eject at the same time depending on amount of thrust that needs to be created.
This engine of course was a concept it was never made and certainly never flew. The next patent that Lorin actually went for was a little more simplistic and he
went for a straightforward what we call jet engine in which air enters a chamber and then there is a fuel burning that happens over here and then the hot gas is
expelled through a nozzle and through in a jet and this again as per newtons third law creates an action reaction that would hopefully propel the craft through the
air. So this was a concept created by Lorin in 1913 for which he actually took a patent. Now thereafter little thereafter there was another concept of jet engine. This
was in 1921 and around this time a gentleman called Guillaume patented a concept which supposedly looks like a jet engine. It has a concept very similar to
present jet engines which we look at detail a little later. It had compressors it had turbines as a result of which it is supposed to create a jet thrust. However as far as
all the records go this kind of engine was never quite materialized and certainly never flew. The one engine that definitely flew and created the so called history of
flight was the wrights engine. Now this engine was again quite simple. It had 4 cylinders. These 4 cylinders actually powered one particular shaft and this shaft
powered the propeller which flew the wright brothers plane simply called flier. And this is the detail of one of those pistons which has all the components and
those who are familiar with the typical engine would find all the components in the piston engine over here. You have the air intake and you have the intake
manifold and then you have the combustion chamber etc. all the component that one is familiar with you would find this here. This was the standard piston engine.
And what they did they had enough calculation to back them up. They realized that they need a minimum of 4 engines to create sufficient power to power their
propeller. And this is what they have put on their craft which flew for the first time in 1903. Now this was the craft this is historic photograph which some of you
may have seen and this shows that the wright brothers flying for the first time in the history of mankind in the beach called kitty hawk in north Carolina USA and
this is the flight in which oliver wright was flying and Wilbur wright was standing over here on the same day in the morning they flew four times one after another
each brother taking his turn. And out of the 4 3 of the flights are recorded as the first 3 flights of humankind. Now this had the engine we have just seen and it has
the propellerswe will have a look at. Now this is a craft which is been preserved in a museum in Washington DC , the Smithsonian institute museum. And you
people go there you will be able to see the craft hanging over there even today.as you can see here it was a biplane as we were discussing , it had 2 wings ok, and it
had 2 tailplanes , in fact they were in front. We could see here a person actually lying down. So Orvil Wright was actually lying down on the craft, because there
was nearly no place for him to sit there, ok, and this you can see the craft from another picture in which the two wings are very clearly seen and the two tail plane
are also seen. As we have discussed this was the part of aircraft design which wright brothers took a long time into perfect before actually they flew. And then now
you can see the propellers which they used in the 1903 flight. One of the propellers they used later on, a little later around 1910, and over the years the shape of
the propellers which they used actually changed a lot. The propeller you can see here is. Its a simpler propeller its a pedal type here the propeller as you can see
in 1910 is a little more twisted-- far more twisted, bigger in size and probably has much better field for creation of thrust. So there was evolution of propeller even

with the Wright brothers over a period of 17 years in which they were involved in the various kinds of flying crafts. There is a historical claim made by a
gentleman called Gustave Whitehead, about 2 years , 4 months and 3 days before the successful flight of the wright brothers , a monoplane actually took to the air
on august 14 1901 that is nearly two and a half years before the Wright brothers flight . Somewhere in US, Connecticut and it was carrying inventor Gustave
Whitehead, and it is reported to have flown by about half a mile which would be far more than what the Wright brothers flew. What the Wright brothers flew for
example in its flight was the distance which is now recorded as equivalent to the wingspan of todays Boeing 747. So it was very small hub so to say but the flight
claimed by Gustave Whitehead, or his successors later on claims to have been a flight of a nearly half a mile. there is no record except for this particular picture . it
was supposed to be monoplane resembling that of a same picture that we have seen for Felix Du Temples monoplane . so somewhere fifty years after Felix Du
Temples monoplane a somebody gentleman named Gustave Whitehead is reported to have created his similar monoplane and actually flew it. However this is not
being scientifically accepted and as far as all the historical scientific records are concerned the first flight is credited to the wright brothers. And what we see now
is that all those flights recorded over first 50 years of flight, all flew with propellers as the only means of propulsion, which means that jet engine as we noted were
not the means through which propulsion was done . it was propellers all the way over a period of half a century. In fact according to the records in various
scientific recording manuals, sometime after world war 1 a high powered committee in US went into the decision making whether a jet propulsion could be used
for various kind of flights and they came with the decision that jet propulsion was really not possible within the foreseeable future and hence they entrusted NACA
thats the national administration civil of civil aviation which created this which was created in US with the creation of large number of propeller blades and these
propeller blades that were created by NACA in between the two world wars. As we shall see later on by this second world war jet propulsion had actually come
into being and the prediction made by the so called high powered body proved to be wrong. We will come to that in a few minutes. Lets go through the
development of propellers. Now propellers what they do is they use airfoil shapes. Now airfoil shapes were created as we have seen as we know by George Cayley
nearly 150 years back and it was proven that many of the birds and fishes do have these kind of airfoil shapes that allowed them to move through the air or water
in case of fishes very smoothly .so that shape is what today we call airfoil shape and this is what is used in propellers also. Propellers uses the shape and as the
propeller rotates as per the shape characteristics they create lift on account of the lift is then utilized as thrust now this thrust is created in a direction which is
perpendicular to the plane of rotation of the propeller and this to be designed into the propeller so its necessary that person who designs the propeller for a
particular craft is knowledgeable about science of propeller so that when he creates the propeller for a particular aircraft the propulsive action is created exactly
perpendicular to the plane of rotation that meets the demand of the particular aircraft. Propellers can be broadly in two types one that pulls the aircraft from the
front that its position is the front of the aircraft either the nose of the aircraft or mounted on the wings on the front of the wings and these are called tractor type
propellers. There are the other types where sometimes a propeller could be mounted on the rear of the aircraft which could be at the rear of the fuselage or body of
the aircraft or at the back of the wings and it could actually create thrust from the rear of these bodies and they are called the pusher type as if they are pushing the
aircraft from the rear. So this is are two kinds of propeller that have been around for quite a long time. Most of the propellers that we see are tractor types, but there
are quite a few pusher type propeller that have also been used over a period of last 100 years. These are the various propeller blades. Airfoil shapes created by
NACA more than 60 years back as you can see these shapes are so many. There are more than hundred shapes over here and they have served the purpose of
creation of little hundreds and thousands of propellers that fly various aircraft around the world. So this was the basis or the beginning of creation of propellers.
There are number of companies who specialize in easing these airfoil shapes for creating the propellers. Lets quickly take a look at how the propeller actually
operates because thats what make made the aircraft fly for nearly half a century. In fact propellers are being used even today for flying many aircraft. So the
history of propellers flying the aircraft is more than hundred years old. And they still active in many aircrafts. So lets take a quick look what the propellers
actually do. The propellers actually if you look at the picture over here they are mounted let us say somewhere at the nose over here which is what we would call a
tractor type of propeller and by virtue of its rotation and the airfoil shape that is given to it, it actually sucks the flow from the front and then it pushes it behind ok.
So this suction of the air is aided by the motion of the aircraft. So as soon as the aircraft starts moving the motion of the aircraft allows the air to move into the
propellerand as the propeller rotates it also applies the suction. So when the aircraft is moving in air the suction of the propeller is expected to match the motion of
the aircraft so that the amount of air that is going through the propeller is actually matched between the propeller and the aircraft movement. Now when that
happens the flow through the propeller then goes through lets say a disc like this which is what we would call the swept area of the propeller and then as it goes
through it acquires a little bit of extra energy or extra momentum and this momentum difference as we know from a a newtons second law provides the thrust .so
this is the momentum of the jet that is being pushed by the propeller this is the momentum of the air that is coming into the propeller and this provides the thrust
that makes the aircraft move. This thrust must balance the drag that is experienced by this entire aircraft. So this propeller matches the entire drag created by this
entire, including the drag of the engine and the propeller itself. So its the only thrusting body mounted on an aircraft. If you look at a the a typical propeller. This
is the typical propeller it would look something like this there are various kinds of propeller various shapes. We probably have a chance to go into it later on in this
course but in this particular a a diagram as you can see there is a aa propeller shape which this is the tip of the propeller ok which is what you would see
somewhere over here and this is the root of the propeller which is at the core of the propeller and is connected to the shaft which comes out of the engine ok and
this shaft goes inside over here and quite often the shaft is covered by a nice body known as a nose cone to make it aerodynamically smooth and that is in front of
the propeller. So flow goes over the nose cone and then enters through the root and then flows over the body of the aircraft. Now each if you take cross section of
the propeller over here just any anywhere you would probably see a shape like this and this is airfoil shape and as we have seen there are so many kinds of airfoil
so many shapes of airfoil that could be used. Typically in one single propeller all the way from here to here we would call this the working part of the propeller
which creates the thrust. You could probably see various propeller airfoil shapes. So the airfoils that are used in a propeller from root to the tip of the propeller
actually change. There are various kind of airfoils. Propellers near the root typically would be a thick propeller whereas the propeller near the tip would typically
be a very thin propeller. A lets take a quick look. Some of the thick propellers airfoil that you see see here are likely to be used near the roots so this is how a
typically a a you would probably have a root propeller here and then slowly they become thinner and as you go toward the tip you would probably have a thin
airfoil like this. So one such set each subset probably could serve the purpose of one propeller and that is how the propellers are utilized airfoils are utilized in a
propeller for creating the thrust. These are the various kinds of propellers that you probably see today. If you go around this is for example a propeller that is after
its being made the propeller needs to be proven and one of the means of proving is to actually test it in a wind tunnel. A a wind tunnel actually is is just a land
based grounded a facility in which various bodies can be put for aerodynamic testing and propeller is also one such element that can be tested inside a wind tunnel
and inside a wind tunnel you test the aerodynamic capability of the propeller you measure the thrust that it is creating and as I mentioned before its necessary that
you have exact estimate of the thrust that the propeller would create because when the aircraft is flying in air the exact matching is an absolute necessity in if there
is any mismatching remember the aircraft is not going to fly if the thrust falls short of the drag the aircraft is going to fall and if there is any passenger they are
going to be hurt or they are going to be killed. So it is absolutely necessary that the thrust of the propeller is very accurately predetermined even before it has
flown. You can see here a propeller now this is a propeller, you can see here you have four blades. Now this is a propeller where you can see you have three blades.
So many of the propellers that fly quite often have 3 blades . Now this is a tractor type of propeller where the propeller is at nose of the aircraft in front of the
aircraft. This is an aircraft in which the propeller is the rear and what we call the pusher kind of a propeller. So its at the rear of the propeller or the tail of the
aircraft and this is a typical design in which it was thought that putting the propeller at the nose may not be appropriate thing to do for this particular design
whereas this particular aircraft design accommodates a propeller right at the nose and its a tractor type of propeller. Now to run a propeller you need engines. As
we have seen 100 years back the kind of engines that everybody was familiar with were the piston engine which were already powering the automobiles and others
vehicles moving on the surface of the earth, a they were also powering various kinds of engines that all the boats that went over the water. Now this kind of engine
had certain specific aa requirements. To make an engine that will go inside an aircraft and will fly with the aircraft needed that they should be very light , they
should create sufficient power to power the propeller which would create thrust to fly the aircraft and the one of the prime requirements of anything that goes in
aircraft that it has to be light and it has to be very compact and very small in size. Now this was a requirement that was specific to the aircraft engines and as a
result of which the engine arrangement needed to be looked into. So what people did they looked at various kinds of a arrangements if you have pistons let us say
lined up one after another ok in line they are simply called inline engines. All these pistons would drive one single shaft over here and this is your piston drive. So
the piston movement could be timed such that there is a continuous power supply to this shaft which of course a drives the propeller. The other way of doing it is
what is known as the opposed cylinder that means instead of having all the pistons on one side and lining them up one after another to get certain amount of
aggregate power you have lets say 2 pistons or 2 cylinders on two sides ok powering a central shaft. So you have 2 pistons from two sides and they are timed in
such a manner that the power stroke of the 2 are staggered in time. Another variant of this is to have a opposed piston within lets say one body of a cylinder.So
you have 2 pistons and it is actually firing on two shafts one this side one on that side. Quite often we shall see later on that they would go on to power a single
propeller. The other arrangement that people came out with is simply called V type where the pistons are arranged in a V formation. They again power the central
shaft over here. In this formation you can again put them in line like this single engine. So you can have V engines lined up one after another or one behind the
other and so you could for example have 2 engines in V formation or you can have 4 engines or you can have 8 engines or you can have 12 engines lined up
inline in V formation. Many of the modern aircrafts do actually have upto 12 engines lined up to supply the aggregate power to run the propeller. The other way of
looking in at power generation is to have let us say X type where you have 4 of these pistons powering the central shaft and again the timing of the 4 pistons are
such that this central shaft is continuously being supplied with power and which runs the propeller . so you can have 4 of them now lined up and then you can have
4 and then 4 engines doubled up, you can have 8 of them lined up creating power to run the propeller. If you have more than 4 , one ways of doing this is to have a
radial arrangement so that you can arrange them around in a circular formation. You can have 5 of them typically, you can have 7 of them or 9 of them and then
again you can double them up. That means you can have 2 sets inline with each other you know so instead of a single piston you can have radial arrangement in
line at least 2 of 2 sets inline so that you can have total of 10 cylinders or 14 cylinders or 18 cylinders powering one single central shaft. The other arrangement is
also simply known as H type which again uses 4 cylinders and this time its trying to power 2 shafts to create power that you supply to the propeller. These multicylinder arrangements for aircraft propulsion were created essentially to go into the aircraft ok. The various cylindrical arrangements that we are looking at the
cylinder arrangements that we are looking at were created essentially for the aircraft power plants. Now as we have seen in the earlier pictures these aircrafts have
shapes these shapes are created by the aircraft designer to create lift, to create minimum drag and of course to house a passenger or passengers to fly in the aircraft.
Now once you create this shape that is minimum amount of drag your engine needs to be somehow accommodated within the shape. This is important issue that
your engine arrangement must confirm to the shape of the aircraft that is being created. So various kinds of engine arrangements were created to go inside these
shapes. For example this tractor type of propeller it has a shape of the front of the body inside which one can guess the engine is housed. We can only see the
propellers here and this engine must have certain amount of space in a certain shape and that shape is likely to be lets say accommodated by something like this or
something like this ok. That particular aircraft is most unlikely to have a radial kind of engine. The shape of the aircraft here doesnt quite throw any promise of
accommodating radial kind of engine. So those are the various issues that govern the choice of the arrangement of engines and the kind of engine shape or
arrangement that would be finally selected for aircraft. The number of cylinders is decided by the kind of power that is required, amount of power that is required
and this is to be decided by the thrust that is required by the aircraft. So to accommodate the aggregate power that is required the number of cylinders can be
increased. So number of cylinders is decided by the thrust power that is to be delivered by the powering propeller. These are the pictures of the various
arrangements that we were talking about. This is typically an inline engine as you can see now. They have been created in a shape that could in a very compact
shape that could go inside an aircraft and you could have your propeller mounted over here. And this is the opposed cylinder type where you have 2 over here and
2 on the other side and this is where your shaft is coming out which is central shaft powered by all the cylinders and this would power your propeller. This is the V
type where you can see one cylinder here and other on the other side and you have so many of them lined up ok and they power the central shaft which is coming
out over here ok and that runs the propeller. So this is the arrangement which typically would go inside an aircraft and confirming to the aircrafts inline shape or
the low drag shape.this is a radial kind of propeller as you can see here, there are so many of them mounted in a radial formation and they have the central shaft
and you can see here the propellers actually fixed to the engine. So these are various kinds of arrangements that have been used over the years. Almost all the
arrangements are still in use, for example, these are the ones you are likely to see in small aircrafts. These upper 2 you are more likely to see in small aircrafts
which probably fly 2 people or not more than 4 people, whereas the lower one you would see powering aircraft which flies may be 6 people or 8 people and radial
engine which accommodates more cylinders which mean more power, more typically be used for aircraft which flies more people, something like 10 12 people in
1 aircraft. Then we look at the various kinds of jet propulsion devices as have been used in last 60 years or so. The first jet engine that is recorded to have flown
actually is the Heinkel engine created by Ohain in Germany and this was a Heinkelaa jet powered aircraft which flew for the first time with a jet engine. So its
recorded as the first aircraft to fly with a jet engine or by what is also known as Heinkel engine. However Heinkel engine is not the first recorded jet engine. That
credit goes to, is given now to Frank Whittle, even though historically its pretty much understood that the creation of Heinkel engine by Von Ohain and that by
Frank Whittle in England Von Ohain in Germany were were going on simultaneously ,independent of each other and they came up with engines almost
simultaneously in their respective countries. The Heinkel engine flew for the first time with on an aircraft, Whittles engine actually flew a little later, this is the
Whittles engine which ah-- he patented. You can see here that he had all his concepts in place. It was based on a thermodynamic concept of a cycle in and, it is a
heat engine, so its supposed to conform to a known cycle and he already had the idea that what kind of cycle he would use. These are the details of the engine in
which he used a a actual compressor used a centrifugal compressor which then a supplied the air to the combustion chamber which drove an axial flow turbine
which in turn drives the compressors and then you have the jet over here which are exit nozzle, which is supposed to finally go out in the big jet to create the
thrust. So this is the conceptual design which Frank Whittle finally patented and was granted the patent. And that was supposed to be the historically the first
patent granted for a jet engine. The kind of a a aircraft power plant that we have today, there are many of them, a we have just seen that the early 50 years most of
the aircraft were flown with what is known as piston props that means piston engine powering propellers. Now as soon as the jet engines came in, one of the
variety that immediately sprang up was what is known as what we today know as turbo props. That means these were the jet engines but they were powering the
propellers that is the jet thrust that was available was not the main thrust making device but its a propeller which creates a main thrust. However immediately
thereafter the actual pure jet engines started coming and this is the thrust characteristic of these 3 basic kind of engines which are in operation even today. And as
you can see here as the flight mach number increases from 0 to lets say 0.75which are still subsonic flights. The effectivity of the turbo props or the piston props
or the propellers start going down and somewhere around mach 0.5 the effectivity of the propellers have gone down to the level that the turbojets become more
and more effective means of powering an aircraft. This was realized more than 50 years back, and people wanted to fly higher they wanted to fly faster and when
flight of mach 0.5 became imminent immediately after the world war 2 a, most of the aircraft designers started looking for jet engines that would give them the
necessary power to fly the aircraft at high speeds. Now some of these are a known today and as a result of which most of the flight today at a higher flight mach
numbers are powered by jet engines. Most of the flight even today at lower flight mach numbers are indeed still powered by propeller driven power plants. So
there is a clear divide here, at low speed you would probably like to go with the propeller driven power plant , at high speed you probably invariably look for a
pure jet engine or a turbojet engine to power your aircraft. If one stretches a little more aa with the use of what is known as propulsive efficiency, which is actually
a measure of the end usage of available energy for final thrust creation. It is not same as thermal efficiency or the overall efficiency of an engine as determined
from, from the thermodynamics. This is the propulsive efficiency that is how much of energy that is available at the end of the engine aa action that is finally
converted to thrust. All the energy that is available for thrust making does not finally create thrust. So this propulsive efficiency is the measure of the or efficiency
of the end use of the available energy. Now this provides quick glimpse of what happens to various kinds of engines. The turbo prop efficiency can be very high at
low flight mach numbers. It peaks at somewhere around mach 0.4 or 0.5 and then it starts dropping very fast ok. And then if you look at the jet engines and its
variants the turbofan engines they start rising, and from flight mach number 0.5 onwards they become competitive. The modern variant of the propeller which is
some kind of aa mix between propeller and fan is called prop fan. And this prop fan extends the propeller utility a little more upto say mach 0.75 or 0.8 and makes
keeps it in a competitive market after which again turbofans and the turbojets would need to be used to power the aircrafts. So these are pretty much known today
than if you have pure propeller your effectivity or efficiency would start going down very fast, a very fast indeed around mach 0.5 and with the modern prop fans.
We will have a quick look at it today you can extend it to around 0.75, but there after inevitably its efficiency would start going down. And one of the reasons the
propellers suffer from the efficiency defect is because the flow over propeller, we have seen they are made of airfoils, the flow over airfoils do become supersonic.
The airfoil that is used in propeller scan not negotiate those supersonic flows in rotating formation, and as a result of which the efficiency starts dropping due to the
appearance of the shock waves due to the supersonic flow. In the prop fans that are used in the modern aircraft and you would probably see more of them in years
to come. Some of the supersonic flow is being accommodated, a low supersonic flow has been accommodated but even today a high supersonic or clear supersonic
flows can not be accommodated through the rotating propellers and as a result of which the efficiency drops starts appearing and hence you would need to use
variety of jet engine either pure jet or turbojet to power your aircraft. The use of prop fans on a also called prop jets extend the use of the propellers to high mach

numbers and this extension has been possible by redesign the propellers with new kind of airfoils. When you go to the propeller chapter we will have a look at
those airfoils what allows them to negotiate higher mach numbers as they are flowing over the propeller blades which as I mentioned could actually go supersonic ,
as a result of which the jet propulsion became more and more important specifically after the world war 2 and today one of the prime means of aircraft flying
around the world is the jet propulsion which we will look at more in the next class. Lets take a quick look at the fundamental issues that we are bothered with
here. The thrust generation as we have seen is by using the newton second law and this creates the thrust which is finally aa equated to the a a mass of air and the
acceleration. We can now rewrite rewrite that as mass flow and change of velocity and this is the mass flow that we have. Now this mass flow if it is very high and
the change of velocity is indeed very small, what we have are what we call propellers. A very high mass of activation is what the propellers do with a very small
change in velocity. On the other hand a very large change of momentum or acceleration is created by the jet engines, which actually operate with a very low mass
of activation. So very small mass is activated through a large change of momentum is what is jet engines. A very high mass of air activated through a very small
change in momentum is what the propellers do. So typically a propeller would operate with air mass flow which could be of the order of 30 to 40 times more than
that of a jet engine of the same size. So the propellers and the jet engines operate on same principal but they use the air mass in different ways. This is the typical
modern propeller, it has large propeller as you can see here the propeller body is much larger than the engine body ok. So it is actually geared to use a large amount
of air mass. On the other hand a modern prop fan as I mentioned and we shall study this later afterwards uses a propeller which is mounted the rear of the engine
and you can see here 2 propellers. You can see here the propellers very big compared to the size of the engine. In the next class we will have a look at a modern jet
engine. We shall look at the various components of the jet engine, how they function and finally how they create thrust by using all these components together in a
matched manner, so that finally we have a net change of momentum which finally creates the thrust that makes an aircraft fly. And we shall cover the modern jet
engines, -- various kinds of jet engines in the next class.
INTRODUCTION TO AEROSPACE PROPULSION
LECTURE 3
In this lecture today we shall see about the Development of Jet Engines over the past 60 years which have been powering the various aircrafts around the world.
This is known as Jet Propulsion. A Propulsive Device is necessary to Power the aircrafts. A Working Fluid mainly Air in our case is used as the Working Fluid. So
this type of Propulsive Device is called as Air Breathing Engines and this type of Jet Propulsion is known as Air Breathing Propulsion as air from the atmosphere
is taken as the working Fluid.
WORKING OF THE SIMPLE JET ENGINE:
The Working Fluid goes into the Propulsive Device and gets accelerated through the device. This acceleration makes the air to exit out of the device with a High
Exit Velocity
than the Inlet Velocity. This change in Velocity produces the Change in Momentum. The Rate of change of Momentum is the Force produced from
Newtons 2nd Law of Motion. Thus this action of Exhaust Jet which is the Change in Momentum Produces a Reaction which is the Propulsive Force, also known as
the Thrust. Therefore Thrust is nothing but the Reaction to the Change of Momentum across the Propulsive Device. This is the basic working principle of the
Jet Engines.
Air has some Properties like Pressure, Temperature, and Velocity when it goes into the Propulsive Device and exhausts out of the Propulsive Device. The Change
of Properties of the Working Fluid produces the Change in Momentum i.e., the Change in Velocity at Exit produces a Momentum Change. The Inlet and Exit
Velocity is in the same line of direction through the propulsive device because Velocity is a vector quantity having both magnitude and direction. Therefore the
Reactive Force also known as the Thrust is produced in the same line of direction as the Exhaust Velocity.
The Diagram of the Schematic Propulsive Device with all the forces, inlet and exit stations marked as a and e respectively is shown. The Working Fluid goes
out with a pressure which is the Static Pressure. The Exit Pressure of the Working Fluid may or may not be equal to the Atmospheric Pressure P a. But in this
diagram, let us take the Exit Pressure Pe is equal to the Atmospheric Pressure Pa(Pe = Pa). At the exit the difference between the two pressures is Zero. Therefore
the Thrust is Dependant only on the Change in Momentum. This is known as Momentum Thrust. This is an Ideal Condition. But when P e is not equal to Pa then we
have a different Thrust value.
Thrust Ideal (or) Momentum Thrust,
T = ma(Ve-Va)
Now let us see about the Real Propulsive Device. What we saw earlier was an Ideal Device. Picture 2 here shows the Real Gas Turbine Engine with a number of
Components.
Working Of Real Propulsive Device:
The Working Fluid, air is coming in from the atmosphere and goes into the Intake. The Intake is one of the common elements of all the Jet Engines. We shall
discuss about the Intake and its importance later. The air goes in to the Compressor, where the Flow Compression process takes places. The air Pressure increases
in the compressor. The air then enters the Combustion Chamber where the Fuel is added. The flow acquires Burning Fuel and the Resulting mixture is Fuel + air
mixture which is known as the hot gas. This Hot gas enters into the Turbine. In the Turbine, some energy from the hot gas is used for work extraction and given as
a Work Input to the Compressor through the Shaft connecting the Turbine and the Compressor. And the compressor uses this work to compress the incoming air.
Here exists an Energy Loop in which the compressed air enters the combustion chamber and fuel is burned. This burned fuel and air mixture also known as the Hot
Gas enters the Turbine and provides work to the Compressor. This is the Energy Loop. This Energy Loop is required for the sustenance of the Engine. The
Balance energy from the Hot Gas is passed through various ducting systems and exhausted out to the atmosphere at high velocity.
In this Gas Turbine Engine shown, there is an Afterburner. As the name indicates, fuel is added to the hot gas coming from the Turbine and the Temperature of the
gas is increased to high values. Then it is exhausted through the nozzles. All the Civil aircrafts do not have an Afterburner component. Only the Military Aircrafts
have the Afterburner set-up. This is the Real Engine Layout. There is a net increase in momentum of air, producing the Thrust thereby. The amount of mass coming
in to the engine is not the same because of the addition of fuel to the air. So the amount of air exiting the Engine would be little higher which is expanded through
the Nozzle. The Change of Momentum Action produces a Reaction of Thrust. This is the Real Engine Process.
Comparing the two cases of Real and Ideal, in the Real process air enters through the intake, undergoes compression, and fuel is added in the Combustion
Chamber. The hot gas goes through the turbine in which a part of the energy from hot gas is used for compressor
work and the other part of the energy is used for
expansion through the nozzle. Conceptually the ideal case is easy to understand where it can be seen in the 1 st picture that the change in velocity brings about a
change in momentum and thereby a Thrust Force is produced. The Mathematical expression is given above for the ideal case.
But the Actual Thrust Production is different from the ideal Thrust production. Picture 3 shows the Actual case. The air enters in to the intake and goes through the
compressor. The compressor compresses the air to a very high pressure. For the same mass, a very high Pressure develops at the exit face of the compressor.
According to the Fluid Statics, the high pressure fluid exerts a pressure on the surrounding body. So the very high pressure of the air at compressor exit exerts a
pressure on the entire Solid body of the compressor. This is shown by a Forward Force i.e., in the direction of the Thrust above the Compressor in Picture 3. The
air then goes into the Combustion Chamber where the Pressure and Temperature of the air changes. At the exit of the combustion chamber, the pressure and
Temperature are different from that at the inlet of the combustion chamber. Integration of this pressure over the entire surface of the Combustion Chamber volume
may produce a Net Pressure in the Forward direction or also on the backward direction. Hot gas enters the Turbine and expands in the turbine. Work to the
compressor is given by the Turbine through the shaft by extracting energy from the hot gas. Since the energy is extracted from the air, the Pressure and
Temperature of the air reduces at the exit of the turbine. The hot gas mass exerts a force on the Turbine component. This produces a net backward force on the
turbine assembly when integrated over the entire surface of the turbine. The Remaining flow of hot gas with the temperature and pressure passes through the jet
pipe, nozzle and expands at an exit pressure P e which is different from the inlet pressure to the nozzle. The difference of Pressure at this point creates a Pressure
Field, a backward Pressure. The Net Effect of all these Forces due to the Pressure when added together will give a Forward thrust and a Rearward Thrust. The
difference between these two thrusts gives the Net Thrust. All components participate in the thrust production.
The earlier stated Momentum difference is a concept only and is a convenient way of thrust measurement. Whereas the Real case shown in picture 3 is the accurate
way of measuring the thrust. The final thrust obtained in real case is closer to the value of thrust obtained in ideal case i.e., momentum difference case.
Real Case Thrust equation:
T = maVe ma Va + Ae(Pe Pa)
st

In the above thrust equation, the 1 part is the Momentum Thrust due to the exit velocity and the 2 nd part is the intake Ram Drag which is due to the Velocity of air
at the Intake Face. The difference between these two gives the Gross Momentum Thrust. The Pressure at the exit P e in actual case is not equal to the atmospheric
Pressure Pa at all times. Therefore when P e is not equal to Pa , then the last part of the equation A e(Pe Pa) adds up to the Thrust equation which is known as the
Pressure Thrust, which is an additional thrust. This pressure thrust appears when the exit velocity is not maximum. It means that the entire kinetic energy is not
expanded. The Kinetic Energy which is unused creates a Pressure Thrust at the exit leading to this term. When the actual and ideal thrusts are compared, the Ideal
Thrust has a higher value than the Actual Thrust. Because in an ideal case the Nozzle Expansion is maximum or optimum. The Entire Potential Energy of the
Working fluid is converted into the Kinetic Energy. Whereas in an actual case the nozzle expansion is not maximum, so the Thrust produced is a lesser value than
the ideal case.
The engine designer and the Nozzle Designer ensures that at no operating condition of the Engine, the P e < Pa. If this happens, then a negative Pressure Thrust is
produced and a Negative Effect on the total thrust occurs which is not desired. Therefore at all conditions the P e = Pa or Pe > Pa , so a positive thrust is produced.
Often there is a small margin for the Pressure thrust to be produced.
Propulsive Efficiency(p):
p is the other parameter that is important for an aircraft engine. Propulsive efficiency is the ratio of the useful Propulsive Energy available at the end of the
Propulsive process to the sum of the used Thrust power and the unused Kinetic Energy of the jet. Unused Kinetic Energy is the energy with which the flow goes
out of the engine without contributing to any work within the engine. In this the Kinetic Energy Relative to the earth is considered with the moving aircraft with
reference to a Stationary Body.
p = Error: Reference source not found
the simplified propulsive efficiency is obtained as,

p = Error: Reference source not found

The Propulsive Efficiency entirely depends on the Inlet and the Exit Velocity of the Engine only.
Let us now consider the various cases of the Propulsive Efficiency:
1.
2.
3.

When Ve >>> Va then it signifies that a Large Acceleration is produced. This often happens with a Low mass flow rate. The Thrust produced also will
be high enough. But it directly affects the Propulsive Efficiency. When V e >>> Va, we can see from p that p Decreases. This is the typical Jet Engine,
which are the compact Thrust Producers. It also affects the Fuel Efficiency.
When Ve = Va , the Propulsive efficiency is maximum and = 100%. But the Thrust Produced is Zero. Such an engine is of no use to us. The only
solution is to combine this type and the above type, such that the thrust produced is substantially enough and the Propulsive efficiency is also
moderately high. This type of engine uses a very High Mass Flow rate, low acceleration of the mass leading to low Jet Velocity. This is often called as
Propeller Engines which have high mass flow, low acceleration and high Propulsive Efficiency.
Turbofan Engines are normally used nowadays combining the above two cases to produce substantially enough thrust. In this engine the small part of
the thrust only occurs from the Jet Effect whereas the remaining part comes from the large mass flow. The Propulsive efficiency is quite good and the
fuel efficiency is also quite good.

Let us now the look at the graph (picture 4) of the Flight Mach Number vs the Propulsive Efficiency ( p).
1.
2.
3.

Turbo Prop Engines (TPE): the TPE is a High mass flow, Low acceleration Propulsive Device and has a high Propulsive Efficiency for entire range of
low speed subsonic Mach numbers. But as the Mach number increases the Propulsive Efficiency decreases because of the Propeller blade effects to
Supersonic and transonic Mach Numbers.
Turbo Fan Engine (TFE): the TFE is a mix between the TPE and the Turbo Jet Engines (TJE). The fan in the TFE is between the propeller and the
compressor. It has a high Propulsive Efficiency at High Mach numbers. This is because high mass flow goes through the fans which give high
propulsive thrust and a low mass flow goes through the compressor giving a low jet thrust. TFEs are suitable for high subsonic Mach numbers in
which the propulsive efficiency is higher.
Turbo Jet Engines (TJE): They are also called as Pure Jets. TJE's are used when the engine size has to be compact enough. Compact engines are
required by the high speed supersonic aircrafts where Mach number is greater than 1. It produces substantial amount of thrust though the Propulsive
Efficiency is low. It can be seen that the TJE's have the lowest Propulsive efficiency out of the 3 aircraft engines. Whereas the TPEs and the TFEs
produces a reasonably good propulsive efficiency at low Mach numbers.

Various Jet Engines Operational in Various Aircrafts:

1.

2.

3.

4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Single Spool Bypass TJE :This type of engine is shown in the picture 5. The operating principle of this engine was discussed earlier. This type of
engine consists of a Large Compressor and a Small Compressor on a single shaft. From the Large Compressor, some amount of air gets compressed
a little and bypasses through the entire inner region of the engine and comes to the rear. And some amount of air enters the Small Compressor and gets
compressed to a maximum possible amount. The compressed air enters the Combustion Chamber and the Turbines. The Work is extracted by the
Turbine from this hot gas. Then it also reaches the Turbine exit. The Hot gas mixes with the cold compressed air from the bypass at the Turbine exit.
This mixture is given a certain amount of length to expand to the optimum value at the nozzle exit. This produces a net change in Momentum and a Net
Thrust is produced. This was the simplest of the Bypass Configuration. When the hot gas and the bypass air mixes in the nozzle, then the propulsive
efficiency obtained for the resulting gas mixture is high compared to the Lower p of the hot gas alone of the Turbo Jet Engine. The Kinetic Energy is
low in the Turbo Fan Engine. Therefore low magnitude of Kinetic Energy is wasted in bypass engines. So the Unused Kinetic Energy is low in bypass
engines. Thus the propulsive efficiency obtained is higher than the other engines.
Twin Spool Turbo Prop Engine:This type of engine is shown in Picture 6. In this type of engine, the Propeller is driven through a Gas Turbine
Engine. The propeller type of engines have been used for the past 107 years. This is because the Propulsive Efficiency of the Propeller engines are
higher for a certain range of Mach number. The same process of compression, combustion chamber takes place in this type of engine. This engine has
only one compressor, which is the High Pressure(HP) Compressor. The hot gas from the Combustion Chamber enters the Turbine. The Turbine now
consists of two Turbine Configurations. One is the High Pressure (HP) Turbine and the Low Pressure (LP) Turbine. The HP Turbine extracts some
energy from the hot gas and is used to drive the HP compressor. Whereas the LP turbine extracts the energy from the air to drive a bigger shaft which is
connected to the Propeller through the Gear Box assembly. About 85% to 90% of the thrust obtained in a TPE is from the Propeller. And the Hot Jet
Thrust is only about 10% to 15%. The TPE is designed in such a way that the low propulsive efficiency hot jet thrust and the high propulsive efficiency
propeller thrust mixes and produces the Total Thrust.
Bypass Twin Spool Gas Turbine Engine:This engine is shown in picture 7. This type of engine consists of twin spool which is nothing but the Twin
Shafts. The Inner Shaft runs through the entire engine and is placed concentrically to the outer shaft. The outer shaft runs through the Core engine
connecting the HP Turbine and the HP compressor. This is known as High Pressure Spool. Inner concentric shaft connects the LP Turbine and the Fan.
This is known as the Low Pressure Spool. There are two mechanical arrangements here. The HP and LP arrangements. This allows to run the spools at
two different RPMs. Generally the HP spool RPM is greater than the Low Pressure Spool RPM. This makes the design more flexible because both
the spools can independently operate on the best possible efficient RPM. There are other components which are equally important. The Intake is such
part which is very important. The intake depicted here is the type of intake that is present in all Jet Engines. The Intake design is complex. This shape is
known as Cowling. The Cowling shape is very important for the Aerodynamic Efficiency for operation of the engine. In high speed aircraft, the cowling
design is critical. The entire outer surface is to be designed properly because the entire outer surface of the engine is open to the air flow and the air
flow should be proper around the shape of the engine such that the drag produced by the engine outer surface is less. This drag should be overcome by
the Thrust that the Engine produces. The outer shape at the Rear part of the Engine is a Boat-Tail shape. This surface shape ensures that the drag
produced by the engine is minimum. Towards the exit of the Jet Engine, the cold Bypass air mixes with the hot jet that comes out through the core of
the Engine. The mixing of these two streams should be done at uniform temperature and pressure at the exit face of the Jet Engine. Therefore, the
Nozzle design and shape are very important factors that determine the temperature and Pressure Uniformity of the mixing of the flow. If the mixing is
non-uniform, then the Thrust will not be linear in the direction of the jet. The thrust will be produced in a sideways component also thereby affecting
the aircraft movement in various directions leading to pitching, yawing. Therefore a non-uniform thrust produces a directional instability due to the
multi-dimensional thrust production. Design of the nozzle is of great importance.
High Bypass Twin Spool Turbo Fan Engine:This engine is shown in picture 8. We know that High bypass engines have a high mass activation inside
the engine which means the Propulsive Efficiency is high. Bypass flow acts in a way that the propulsive efficiency is high and the core hot jet thrust has
low Propulsive efficiency. More aircrafts nowadays uses high bypass engines. The fan size is huge and it is becoming bigger at every development.
Ultra High By-Pass Twin Spool Geared Turbo Fan Engine :This engine is shown in picture 9. The fan has gone bigger than the high bypass engine
and the size is bigger than the core engine. Therefore a gearbox is used to run the fan at a lower RPM so that mechanically and aerodynamically the
entire engine is efficient. The thrust produced will be very high.
Three Spool Turbo Fan Engine:This engine is shown in picture 10. The engine consists of three spools. The inner spool runs through the engine
running only the fan. The intermediate pressure spool is connected to the intermediate pressure turbine. This is known as Intermediate Pressure Spool.
The HP spool connecting the HP Turbine and the HP compressor is the outer spool. These 3 spools run at three different RPMs and some modern
aircrafts use this type of engine.
Two Spool Turbo Shaft Engine:This engine is shown in picture 11. This type of engine is used in flying the Helicopters. It consists of two spools.
These 2 spools are used to run the propeller or rotors of a helicopter.
Twin Spool Powerplant with Intercooler:This engine is shown in picture 12. This engine is a variant of the gas turbine engine used in land based
turbine. The intercooling is used between 2 sets of compressors. The intercooler is used to increase the Overall Efficiency of the Engine that is used in
land based powerplants.
Three Spool Geared Contra Rotating Aft Prop Fans:This engine is shown in picture 13. This type of engine is rda modern engine which is likely to
fly soon. It consists of a three spool combination. The main engine consists of 2 spools the HP and LP spool. The 3 spool is taken after the LP turbine
to the prop fans which consist of 2 gearboxes. These gearboxes are separate because the 2 prop fans are made to rotate in the opposite direction. Thus
they are known as Contra Rotating. These fans are placed behind the Engines, so they are known as Aft Fans.
Two Spool High Bypass Aft Fan Turbofan:This engine is shown in picture 14. The fan is mounted at the rear of the engine on the Turbines.
Therefore
the Turbines directly drive the Fan and no shaft is required. So the Transmission efficiency is 100% here. It consists of a two spool with the
3rd spool being the Turbine-Fan arrangement.

A frontal view of the two spool geared high bypass turbo fan engine is shown in picture 15. The fan sizes are huge. Each blade is the size of a full grown human
being.
Contra Rotating Twin Rotor aft fan prop fan test:
The aft fan engine is shown in the test bed at ground in picture 15. For flight testing it is mounted on the aircraft, which is shown in picture 16.
We can say that the various developments of the gas turbine engines have led to the more fuel efficient engines with the propulsive efficiency
increasing. The compactness of the engine has also increased and various mechanical designs have also come up. The important parameter of Thrust to Weight
Ratio has also become higher and higher.
Research field looks on the new issues of Energy Audit and new fuels, reducing the pollution, reducing the noise levels and the Infra-Red Signature
devices development for military aircrafts.
INTRODUCTION TO AEROSPACE PROPULSION
LECTURE NO 23
Today we shall see about the various types of engines that power the aircraft for flight. We have already had good exposure to various laws of physics like the
Newtons Laws of Motion, the Thermodynamic Laws. Most of these engines or all of these engines conform to these laws and they cannot operate without these
laws. These are the fundamental laws on which the Engines are built and operated. So they are also called as Heat Engines. As these engines create motion, they
are also necessary to satisfy the Laws of Motion.
Today we shall see about Piston-Prop Engine.
PISTON PROP ENGINE:
This is the engine that powered the 1 st flight of the Wright Brothers. 50 years later the 1 st flight almost all aircrafts flew with the piston prop engine. Even today
1000s of aircrafts fly with this type of engine. The working of this type of engine will be discussed today.

There are two components of the Piston Prop Engine. They are:
1.
2.

Piston Engine: It is also known as the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). This type of engine creates the power for the engine which is used by the
propellers to provide the thrust.
Propellers: They are known as the Thrusters. They create the thrust by using the Power provided by the Piston Engine. They convert the power of the
piston engine to the thrust which assists in aircraft moving forward.

Piston Engine is created from the concept of Energy, Work from the laws of thermodynamics. These laws again help to convert this work into the power.
PISTON PROP POWER PLANTS:
This type of engine is based on the Otto Cycle. This Otto cycle is one of the cycles upon which the heat engines are generally based on. There is the Ideal Otto
Cycle and the Actual Otto Cycle. The Piston Engines work upon the Actual Otto Cycle.
These Piston Prop Power plant engines are the ICE. The combustion is the method by which the energy is supplied to the system. The system is nothing but the
Engine itself. Input from outside the system is supplied into the system. This energy is converted to work. This conversion uses the Thermodynamic laws. This is
the principle which is used in creating Engines.
Energy from outside the system which is the process of burning the fuel known as the Combustion Process is to be converted to Work Output. The mechanism by
which this is converted produces the Mechanical Work upon which the whole engine is built. We shall see that all the thermodynamic concepts are used in this
conversion and the thrust is thereby obtained which makes the aircraft fly.
The heat engines that are developed should be based on one or the other thermodynamic cycle so that a continuous process of control is there over the various legs
or stages of the cycle. The main advantage of using these thermodynamic laws is that the we can predict how the engine will perform at various legs or processes
of the cycle along with the mathematics that goes into the thermodynamic laws. Therefore it is necessary for the creator of the engine that the engine conforms to
the Thermodynamic Laws so that the final performance is very closely predicted. A Thermodynamic Cycle is made up of different processes or legs. These
processes can be constant volume process, constant pressure process, isentropic process..etc. All these processes might combine to form a cycle. So a
thermodynamic cycle performance can be predicted. All the processes of the cycle have a definite path. The cycle uses or re-cycles the working medium which is
nothing but the Air from the atmosphere. The main purpose of using air as a working medium is that, it is available in bulk quantity. So all the engines which we
will be seeing in this course will be the Air Breathing Engines (ABE). Towards the end of this course we will be seeing the Rocket Engines which are the NonAir Breathing Engines.
Now let us see about the Ideal Otto cycle.
IDEAL OTTO CYCLE:
This cycle is shown in the Picture 1 of the plot of Specific Volume (v) vs Pressure. This cycle has6 processes. The air is taken in freshly which is shown by the
point a. The air intake is from a-b. Then the air is compressed from b-c in which the pressure and the temperature increase. The combustion process is shown
from c-d where the fuel is added. In this combustion process, the temperature of the air mixed with the fuel increases. So as the temperature increases, pressure
also increases. Then fromd-e is the expansion of the air or the power stroke. This is the stroke that produces the power to the entire engine. From e-b there is
some heat rejection through various heat transfers. The process b-a, the exhaust of the hot gas is exhaled. Then again the fresh air comes in through a-b into the
system. This is a continuous process.
SCHEMATIC OF THE ENGINE:
The schematic of the Piston is shown horizontally below the Plot and vertically at the right of the plot. The Stroke Length LP is the displacement of the Piston
from the Top Dead Centre (TDC) to the Bottom Dead Centre (BDC) which is held upright in vertical position. The piston can also be horizontally placed and
need not be vertical alone. When air is inhaled from a-b, the piston moves from the TDC to the BDC forming a large space of opening for the air to come in. Air
is sucked in to the piston and fills up the entire space. Then during the Compression stroke from b-c the piston moves from the BDC to TDC compressing the air
to a very small space. Air is trapped in this small space. In this small space where the air is trapped, the combustion process takes place where the fuel is injected
into the air. This process raises the temperature as well as the Pressure of the air trapped. This pressure acting on the piston head is forced to move the piston from
the TDC to BDC. This stroke is called the Power Stroke or Expansion stroke fromd-e. Then the exhaust stroke starts. The burnt gas exhaust is exhaled out of
the port at the TDC through a valve. The opening and closing of the valve is controlled by a timing port. And at the same time the gases are exhaled, the fresh air
comes in again. These ports are timed to open and close.
The various processes involving these compression and expansion are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

a-b: the air intake takes place at Constant Pressure Process.

b-c: the compression process is Isentropic in nature in ideal cycle. It means that the entropy is conserved.
c-d: the combustion occurs at Constant Volume Process. There is no change in Volume.
d-e: the expansion or the power stroke occurs at Isentropic again.
e-b: the heat rejection is at Constant Volume Heat Rejection from the exhaust gases.
b-a: the exhaust stroke is occurring in a Constant Pressure Process. The exhaust of the burnt gas takes place in this stroke.

In the Isentropic process above for an ideal cycle, it means that there are no losses occurring in each stroke and the process is adiabatic in nature. Therefore an
Isentropic process can be said to be a Reversible Adiabatic Process.
All these legs can be done in various thermodynamic processes. So all these processes can be put together to find out the work output of the engine. All these
processes should be such that they conform to the various Thermodynamic Laws and say how an entire works.
AREA OF THE PV DIAGRAM:
It can be noted from the PV diagram that, as the Net Area of the Cycle Diagram Increases, then the Power output also increases. The area underd-c is the
output Power available and the area under b-c is the input power given. The useful amount of Work available to generate the Thrust is the area of b-c-d-e
curve. This is the Net Work or useful work available.
Network = Output Work Input Work
The engine designer tends to increase the area of the cycle if there is a need to increase the Power Output. To increase the Power Output to a maximum value,
then there are some ways:
1.
2.

Increasing Specific Volume (v): by increasing the Stroke Length, the Specific Volume can be increased so that the a-b line increases.
Increasing Pressure (p): by increasing the pressure thed-e line increases such that d is at higher pressure and e is at low pressure.

The large change in volume causes the engine size to increase. And the large change in pressure causes the volume to change. Large change in temperature
requires the large input of fuel or fuel of high heat release capacity. Therefore, these are some of the troubles that are faced when the power is to be increased.
Because when volume changes then the engine size also changes which means the Engine weight goes up which is not desired when used to power the aircraft.
Ideal Otto Cycle Analysis:
To quantify our needs, let us mathematically develop the Otto Cycle.
The line c-d is the region where the heat input (Q1) is given to the cycle. The line e-b is the region where the heat goes out (Q 2) of the cycle. Therefore, if no
compression and expansion took place then Q1 & Q2 are the input and output given to the cycle.
Heat Input, Q1 = Cv ( T3-T2)
Heat Output, Q2 = Cv ( T4-T1)
Taking the points b-c-d-e as 1-2-3-4, it gives the Heat Input and Heat output to and out of the system. The Power Stroke Converts the heat of energy released by
the fuel burnt and the pressure increase obtained through the compression process into a mechanical work or mechanical motion. Therefore, the Net Work is:
Net Work = Q1-Q2
= Work done by power stroke work done by Compression Stroke
= area bcde

= available useful work from the cycle to produce the Thrust.

CHARACTERISTIC PARAMETERS OF THE CYCLE:
There are number of parameters that characterize a cycle. They are called the Characteristic Parameters. There are 3 such parameters:
1.
2.
3.

Compression Ratio () : Vb/Vc. It is the Volume Ratio of the Inlet Stroke a-b and the Compression Stroke b-c.
Pressure Ratio () : Pc / Pb . It is the Pressure Ratio between the Compression and the Power line.
Temperature Ratio (): Td / Tb. It is the Temperature Ratio of the Maximum Temperature of the cycle to the Minimum Temperature of the cycle.

Every cycle is sensitive to these ratios because these parameters decide the work capacity and efficiency with which the work is accomplished in the cycle. Cycles
are mentioned often in terms of these ratios. In fact, the Open Cycles are mentioned in terms of the Pressure Ratios.
The Compression and Expansion are Isentropic. So we can use the isentropic laws. The Combustion and Heat Rejection processes are Iso-choric (constant volume
process). We can use these laws also. Using these laws, if we put a simple derivation we get the Thermal Efficiency of the system to be:
th= 1- 1/(^(k-1))
where,
k specific heat ratio of the working medium (air in our cycle)
Compression ratio of the cycle.
If we have the and k value for a cycle, then the thermal Efficiency can be found out. Therefore thermal efficiency of the cycle can be found out quickly. This
allows an engine designer to configure a cycle before it is even built.
Using this equation from above for example: taking the values as shown in Table-1, Picture 2. Calculating the Efficiency of the cycle for various compression
ratios, and two different k values of 1.35 for hot gas and 1.4 for air, we can see that the efficiency of the cycle with pure air is greater than that for a hot gas. But
for us to produce power, hot gas is used. Therefore, as the compression ratio increases, the Efficiency of the cycle also increases. This gives the designer an idea so
as to obtain efficiency for the cycle, what has to be the compression ratio and the k value.
T-S DIAGRAM OF OTTO CYCLE:
The P-V diagram can also be recast as the T-S diagram as shown in Picture 3. The Thermal Efficiency in the TS diagram can be found out as follows. The Work
Input to the System is the Area 6-2-3-5 and the Work Output from the system is the Area 6-1-4-5. Therefore the Thermal efficiency is given as
th = (Q1-Q2)/Q1
= (area 6-2-3-5 area 6-1-4-5) / area 6-2-3-5
= Net Area / area 6-2-3-5
th = area 1-2-3-4 / area 6-2-3-5
Consider another cycle plaed in the TS diagram which has the same net area
as the 1st cycle. Area 1-2-3-4 = Area 1-7-8-9. It implies that 2 different people have
designed these 2 different cycles with the net area
being the same. In the 2nd cycle the th is higher than the 1st cycle because the Heat Rejection in the 2nd cycle
shown by the area 6-1-9-10 is lesser than the 1st cycle heat rejection which is shown by the area 6-1-4-5. Therefore the Area 6-7-8-10 is also lesser than the
area 6-2-3-5.
The line 7-8 is the heat input of the 2nd cycle at constant volume which makes the efficiency of the 2nd cycle higher than the 1st cycle. The cycle designer plays an
important role in choosing these values and a lot of thought is be done before creating the Otto cycle to create the Piston Engine which is used to generate the
Thrust.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IDEAL AND ACTUAL CYCLES:
The picture of ideal and actual cycle is plotted together in Picture 4. The actual engine will have some losses and will work on the actual cycle. We shall see in
what ways the real cycle of the engine differs from the ideal cycle.
Difference:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Net Area of the actual cycle is lesser than the Ideal cycle Net Area because the Work done during the expansion and compression process is not
Isentropic. There are some losses in the form of energy loss. Therefore the Isentropic process is not reversible. It still though remains closely Adiabatic.
Therefore the Net Work out of the system for an Actual cycle is lesser than the Ideal cycle.
The Intake and Exhaust stroke are not on the same pressure line as the ideal. They both differ from the ideal cycle.
Intake: the intake stroke occurs at a Pressure Line 1-2 which is lesser than the Ideal cycle Pressure line a-b
Compression: the pressure at compression is starting at 2 which is lesser than the ideal cycle pressure b. Therefore, the actual cycle pressure of
compression starting is lower than the Ideal cycle. This is because the process is not isentropic and has some losses due to the Piston Motion. The end
of the compression does not reach c as the ideal cycle, but reaches a lesser pressure value 3.
Combustion: the combustion process starts even before the compression process has ended at 3-4. The Pressure and temperature rises for the gas. An
incomplete combustion occurs, which is why the piston never reaches the ideal cycle position of 4 for the combustion process.
Expansion: the expansion starts at 4 even before the combustion has completed. The power stroke moves the piston to 5 which is at a pressure lower
than the ideal cycle pressured. The expansion completes at a lower pressure. The Power stroke appears to be rounded because there is no time to
complete the entire process as the exhaust gas has to be taken out of the system. The gases are exhausted out very quickly.
Exhaust: the exhaust occurs at 5-6 which is a higher pressure than the ideal cycle pressure. There is a slight difference between the exhaust stroke and
the intake stroke which causes a loss of energy and the Thrust also Reduces. The exhaust completes off at 6. The cycle then starts off once again. It is
a continuous process.

TWO STROKE ENGINES:

This type of engine is shown in the Picture 5. The Otto cycle was earlier used to develop the 2 Stroke engines. They are not used in aircraft engines anymore.
Modern aircrafts uses 4 stroke engines.
The Working of the 2 Stroke engines is the whole cycle is completed within the 2 legs of processes. The Intake and the Power stroke are combined together in
this cycle. This happens when the Piston moves downward from the TDC to BDC; the fresh intake of air comes in from the side of the engine. Then when the
Piston moves top to TDC where the air gets compressed and combustion takes place at TDC itself. The Combustion and the Exhaust Stroke are put together in
this engine.
The cycles that we will be looking from now onwards will be four stroke engines.
FOUR STROKE ENGINE:
This type of engine is shown in Picture 6. These types of engines are used in modern aircrafts. The thermodynamic processes are converted into the strokes.
Operation of Four Stroke Engines:
The Intake Valve (A) or the intake port opens through which the Fresh air comes into the engine cylinder. These opening of the ports are timed properly. The piston
moves to the BDC and the air fills the entire cylinder. The Compression Stroke starts which compresses the air to a small place in which the piston moves from
BDC to the TDC. The combustion Process starts at the TDC in which a Spark Plug (K) initiates the ignition. The combustion produces a high pressure,
temperature and high internal energy hot gas. This pressure moves the piston downward to the BDC which is the Power or Expansion Stroke. In this stroke the
Power is obtained and extracted. What remains is the burnt gas which is exhausted out of the cylinder by the inertial movement of the piston to the TDC. The burnt
gases are sent out through the exhaust valve (J) which is timed properly to open. Almost entire amount of burnt gases are exhausted.
Only some quantity of the
burnt gases remains in the TDC when the inlet port opens and the fresh air comes in. So the air that gets compressed from the 2nd time is not a fresh air but a
mixture of fresh air and burnt gases. This is the reason why the Real cycle differs from an Actual cycle.

The power has already been taken by the Crankshaft to which the Piston is attached. The crankshaft provides a Rotary motion from the reciprocating motion,
which powers any working body. In our case, the rotary motion is used to rotate the Propellers. So this is the working of the four stroke engine.
In the next lecture we will be seeing as to how an engine of this kind is converted to aircraft power plants. We shall be looking at the arrangements of the various
components so that the Thrust is obtained.
In todays lecture we will look at the development of aircraft engines using the piston cylinder concept of IC engines using various considerations of
thermodynamics and various other mechanical engineering issues that needed to be all put together to make aircraft power plants. First we will deal with various
issues that deal with are related to basic IC engines starting with thermodynamics that we did in the last class and we shall see how all these fundamental science is
and certain amount of mechanical engineering is put together in making of engine that finally go on to fly the aircraft. The various thermodynamic issues that need
to be considered much of it has been dealt with in the earlier lectures. The cycle considerations that need to be looked into and as we have discussed all engines
and the engines that we are talking about are the heat engine need to be based on thermodynamic cycles and we will look at some of these thermodynamic cycle
issues once again and then we will look into the various mechanical engineering issues that needs to be put together along with thermodynamic issues to create
aircraft engines. The IC engines or the piston engines are more popularly called, are quite often the main source of power plant in aircraft for little thousands of
aircraft over the last 100 years and even today little hundreds or thousands of aircrafts are still flying around with engines or aircraft power plant based on piston
engines. These are the small aircraft which make , which are flown by small engines and we shall have a look at some of these engines today and how these
engines are created and put together to fly the aircraft. We started with talking about cycles. Now we look at the cycles all over again. To see and that is where we
start again from to build up our engines. Now we have a look at the concept of cycle both in P-V diagram as well as in T-S diagram and let us have a quick look at
all over again. We have seen that if you have let us say two different cycles, ideal cycle and this moment let us consider simple ideal cycles. If u have two different
cycles given by let us say 1234 and 12341 and then the other one which is 17891. If the two cycles are doing same amount of work from both cycle considerations
we can write down that the work done by both of them may be same. But the work input in case of one cycle is more than that of other and the work output also is
also different from the two cycles. The result is that the cycle 1234 actually has more work heat input and more heat output. However when you consider the
efficiency, the efficiency of the cycle 12341 is actually is less than the efficiency of 17891. Now this comes from the efficiency definition that we have done in last
class. If you look at the P-V diagram again, we look at the W done. Now we had seen that two legs of the cycle where the work is done. One is cause the work
what we call the power stroke where work is extracted from the engine and the other is a compression stroke in which where the work is put inside of the engine
and in this we can see here that the work has been put in and work has been taken out from both the cycles. In terms of the basic considerations that we had seen
that the two cycles supposed to do same work. So for both the cases Q1- Q2 is actually equal to W1- W2 so that the net work done is equal to the net heat that is
gone into the system and that is same for both the cycles. However as we had just seen that the efficiency of the one of the cycles that is 17891, is actually more
than the efficiency of the cycle 12341. Now this brings us to the point that if we have two cycles with same work output but the efficiency of one could be better
than the other one. That means the efficiency translated to fuel efficiency. It would mean that the one cycle actually consume less fuel than the other one doing
same amount of work. That is obviously a very attractive thing for any engine maker. Now if we look at schematic of the piston that we have here and we have
discussed this in the last class. Let us look at this again quickly. We have this piston stroke and during which you would need to perform the work. So when the
piston is moving in, it is actually doing the compression work and when it is forced out, that is the power stroke. Now what happens is if you have to do more
work out of this piston, you would need to change the volume of this and we will come to the actual formulae in few minutes. The point is that if you have to
create more efficiency of one cycle, you would need to create more compression ratio as we have seen in last lecture. The thermal efficiency is directly depend on
compression ratio and which means that one of them has a higher pressure ratio than other, which means the process 17 actually executing a higher compression
ratio than the process 12 and that is the source of the higher efficiency. Now to create higher compression ratio this piston has to move more, that means the
length of the stroke would have to be more. And this would require the piston to be of large size. So if you want more compression ratio, more efficiency which
translates to more fuel efficiency and fuel conservation, you would need to probably have a piston which has a longer stroke length. Now this is something which
comes out of the basic consideration of thermodynamics as seen from simple ideal cycle analysis. Now this means that you would require a piston which is of
larger size or longer in length to obtain higher efficiency. Now this is a bit of a problem in aircraft that if you are looking at anything that has to go on a flying
aircraft, the size and weight are restrained and they are premium, because anything you carry in aircraft would have to be compensated by creating more thrust. So
large size and higher weight are something that has severely restricted whenever an engine has been considered for aircraft. This is one of the reasons why for
example, aircraft do not use diesel engine which as you know are higher in weight because of the fact that they operate under higher compression ratio. And those
compression ratios do give the diesel engine the higher efficiency. So conclusion from the earlier slide that you can go for higher compression ratio if we move
towards diesel engine, it could become unacceptable to aircraft designers because the diesel engines are typically heavier and would not be carried in an aircraft in
efficient manner taken the aircraft as a whole. So even the engine is more efficient the aircraft as a whole would become an inefficient device. So that is one of the
considerations. The other is of course the size limitation. If you have larger piston sizes, the size of the whole engine would tend to go up as we have seen before
and we shall see again today. The total size of whole the cylinders put together make up the whole engine which means that there is a restriction on the total
number of cylinder that you can put, total sizes of the cylinder that can go on an aircraft. Finally whatever goes on an aircraft has to meet on the aircraft shape. The
shape of the aircraft is important to make air worthy. And as result of which there is a restriction in the size of the piston length and the cylinder volume that can go
on an aircraft. Such limitation normally not there land based vehicles. So land based vehicles quite often can go on for higher efficiency using a heavier or larger
engines. So as a result of these restrictions the work done per cylinder in a piston engine that goes on an aircraft tends to get limited. And this limitation is what
aircraft engine designers have to live with. Now as a result of the fact that to make an aircraft fly you need certain aggregate amount of power and to use this
aggregate amount of power you need to then put together a number of cylinders. So the aggregate amount of power is quite sufficient to meet the requirements of
aircraft thrust. So the power of reciprocating engine as we know is proportional to the volume of the combined pistons and quite often many of the IC engines or
piston engines you may have heard often is you know referred to or cited as so much of volume and that is because of the volume does represent the work as it is
of the particular engine. The other thing that required in an aircraft is a light weight. Anything that goes on an aircraft has to be as light as possible. As a result of
which many of the piston engines very quickly started getting made of aluminium alloys which were developed specifically for aircraft grade. So the aircraft grade
aluminium alloys were developed of which the aircraft engines were made which are quite often not used in the land based vehicles. So both in terms of the way
the engines are designed and created and then way they are made needed to be developed differently for aircraft engines. This is something which happened
probably more than forty or fifty or sixty years back. And as a result of which most of aircraft engines today much lighter and much smaller than corresponding
engines that used in land based vehicles. Let us take a quick look at some of arrangements that are quite often done in various kinds of aircraft engines which often
tend to be multi cylinder engines. And as we seen multi cylinder is often arrived as by putting together total amount of work that is necessary to drive the propeller
which of course creates the thrust that flies the aircraft. Now as we have seen the number cylinder arrangements, let us quickly look at this again. You can have
cylinder lined up one after another what is known as inline version one after another. The other version is you can put two cylinders in V formation and then you
can have a V in line. So you can have two by two cylinders lined up or you could have X type where four cylinders are around one central crank shaft. Then you
can have four in line which means you can have multiples of four or eight, just like you have multiples of two, four, six, eight etc. However there are options
where you can have four cylinders in this fashion which is often referred to as H type so as four cylinders are arranged in oppose fashion and not in X type. Ok.
And the other possibilities, if you have odd number of cylinders depending on as I mentioned earlier the aggregate amount of power that is required finally to drive
the propeller, if you land up with a number that is five, or for example seven, or nine and if the aircraft shape accommodates it quite often one of the arrangements,
is referred to as radial arrangement where you have five or seven or even up to nine cylinders arranged radially around the central crank shaft. So all these pistons
supply power to central crank shaft. Except now in this case as you can see now here you would need large diameter to accommodate all these engine. Ok. So the
point here is that each of these as you can see have different kind of final shape. This would have one kind of shape. This would need another kind of shape. This
has a different kind of shape. And this of course has a different kind of shape, the outer shape. I am now talking about right now outer shape, within which all these
cylinders are arranged. Because this outer shape has to conform to aircraft body inside which this engine is going to be housed. So the final arrangement is quite
often decided by 2 considerations. One is aggregate amount of power that is required to drive the propeller which finally flies the aircraft. The other consideration
is the shape of the aircraft in which this arrangement is going to go inside, whether it can accommodate this arrangement, is the other consideration. So these two
put together finally create the aircraft engine which goes inside the aircraft.
As we have seen in the earlier one, each of these pistons actually operates under particular thermodynamic cycle. Thermodynamic cycle is the basis of
each of these pistons actually working. However what happens is that, since they are all supplying power to the same central crank shaft, it becomes necessary to
supply power to the crank shaft almost on a continuous basis and to do that the mechanical engineering requires that the power supplies stroke or what we call the
power stroke needs to be time standard. So each of these cylinders are now operating in such a manner that the power stroke of those cylinders do not occur
simultaneously. They are time standard. Let us quickly go back to the earlier one. If u can see here, for example this diagram the cylinders as you can see here are
at different positions. Ok. And you know, these two are more or less at same position and these two are more or less at same position. So the power stroke of these
two are probably timed together where as the power stroke of these two cylinders are probably timed together. So where as in X type you can see each of them has
a different stroking arrangement. So the stokes are essentially staggered inclined so that the supply to the central crank shaft occurs in a timed staggered manner, so
that almost at every split second there is a power stroke being supplied to the main crank shaft. Now this is a mechanical arrangement which needs to be created.
Even if you have a multi cylinder arrangement, especially most of the aircraft engines do have multi cylinder arrangement, even though each and every of these
cylinders actually operating under same thermodynamic cycle. Let us take a look at now how the piston engines actually create power in terms of actual operation.
We have seen how they can be put together in terms of thermodynamic considerations. Now we can look at from pure mechanical considerations. The power
created or power stroke is directly proportional to the average pressure that is applied on this piston by the length of the piston stoke. Ok. And the area. Ok. And
that into n by 2, n is of course the rpm and n by two is the power supplied per minute. So these parameters put together L P A is that of course the volume through
which the piston is displaces. So that is the displacement volume of the piston. As I mentioned earlier it is often referred to as one of the specifications of every
engine. And that multiplied by the pressure so that of course gives you the force and that into the rotation gives you the power per unit time. Now this of course
tells you that if you have a longer piston stroke, you get more power, if you have bigger area of the piston, you get more power. If you have a higher mean
effective pressure, you can get more power, or if you can afford to or if you are in a position to run the engine at higher rpm you can get more power. Now let us
you look at these parameters quickly again. We have just seen that in an aircraft engine, there are size restrictions, there are weight restrictions. So you cannot have
a large piston stroke, you cannot have a large piston. You cannot have a large piston area because of size restrictions. So those two get automatically restricted by
their requirement of aircraft, they have to be restricted. The pressure gets a little restricted because of the fact that if you have a very high pressure, this piston
would have to be built with very heavy material. That what is normally done, for example in a diesel engine which is made for very thick material to withstand the
very high pressure normally created in a diesel engine. So the pressure has some restriction. Otherwise the whole piston cylinder would have to build like a
pressure vessel. So all these restrictions put together the aircraft engine need to be created or designed. The fourth possibility we have here is the rpm. So most of
the aircraft engines do operate at some high rpm so that the power created is of reasonable amount and sufficient to drive the propeller that crates the thrust. As a
result the power stroke that is created would have to be very fast. So this is the aircraft engine requirement that you cannot have high length of the piston stroke,
you cannot have large area, those are restricted. You cannot have very high pressure because of the limitation on the weight. But you can go for a somewhat higher
rpm and as a result most of aircraft engine do operate at somewhat higher rpm than many of the land based engines. And hence we can say the ideal work that is
done by an engine and this IHP is something which can also configure from PV diagram or which is often sometime referred in many books as integrated diagram
which comes from thermodynamic cycle diagram or pressure volume diagram. You can get the amount of work from that diagram and that would have to be equal
to the work done as we have written above and this is now expressed in terms of the volume and this is the volume of the cylinder and as I mentioned quite often
cylinder volume is mentioned in the specification of the engine as a indicator of its work done and N C is the number of cylinders. That tells you what is the total
amount of work that would be required to be done for the whole aircraft. Not by one cylinder, but for the whole aircraft. So when you put whole of together you
will get the total work requirement for the whole aircraft to drive let us say propeller. Now the question here is, let us go back to the pressure which I have written
here as mean effective pressure or MEP. Now this mean effective pressure is quite often you know, is the average pressure which is operative on this piston during
piston stroke and as a result of which we have what is called and the pressure is actually changing from TDC to BDC as the piston is moving. So the mean
effective pressure is defined, it is not one single pressure, it is the mean effective pressure between this point and this point during the traverse of the piston and
this is often defined as mean effective pressure or MEP. To facilitate certain amount of computation of power, the prediction of power that can be made from
various prior calculations. Now we shall define mean effective pressure later on in next lecture in various ways which can be connected to the IHP or what we call
BHP and as a result we could have two mean effective pressures, indicated mean effective pressure or break mean effective pressure. So they are two slight
different variants of mean effective pressure and we shall define them appropriately in next class. So for a piston engine the increase in mass flow then either you
have more no of cylinder or you have higher rpm so that mass flow per unit time is very fast so the cylinder is filled up and exhausted in very quick succession. As
a result of which you get more power. Or you do both. That means you have higher rpm and then you have higher size, now size is restricted. So some of these
things would have to be optimised for every engine that you need to configure. Now suppose you have an increase rpm to crate large mass per unit time. This will
mean that the piston will be moving up and down the length of the cylinder more frequently and as a result of which it will actually encounter more of sliding
friction, as a result of which there will be frictional losses which we shall be talking about a little. And as a result of which there will be a loss of efficiency. That is
a mechanical loss. Not thermodynamic item really. But all that has to be considered once you consider how the aircraft engine works. So there are thermodynamic
issues, there are mechanical engineering issues. And all of them put together make for an aircraft engine and we shall look into them one by one as we go along.
Let us quickly look at some of the thermodynamic issues all over again. We have the real cycle which we had look in the last class and we see here that the actual
work involves the number of things we have the heat input here and then the work output here. Now what happens during the heat input is, it is entirely possible
that the process of combustion as we are looking at is not complete combustion. And a result of which during the process, you know 3 to 4 the combustion of fuel
is actually incomplete. And as a result of which it does not reach at the top value. This is what we are seeing in a real cycle. Apart from the incomplete combustion,
the combustion within the piston engine. If you have a look at the volume that is created here at the end of TDC, this is the volume in which the combustion is to
be performed, combustion is to be done. It is entirely possible that when the combustion is initiated, it is not uniform along this volume, it is not uniform around
the cross section of the piston head. So this non uniformity also again leads to certain amount of work done which is less than the ideal amount of work
considered. Then we look at the fact that the piston is moving. The movement of the piston of course entails as I said. The mechanical friction loss between piston
and cylinder body and as a result of which it happens twice. Once during the power stroke and once during the compression stroke. So the friction losses would
have to be brought into reckoning while considering the real efficiency of engine. Then larger the engine size, that is length and diameter, more is the surface of the
friction loss. And as a result, higher are the losses. Larger the cylinder size more are the heat losses through cylinder surfaces. So those are the other losses coming
into the picture now. Now the cycle efficiency as we have seen is directly influenced by compression ratio, the pressure ratio and the temperature ratio. Now more
the compression ratio, or pressure ratio, we have seen the cylinder would need to be built of heavier material. These things as I have mentioned are prohibited. So
if you want to overcome some of the incomplete combustion by building heavier engine, you really cant do that. Because aircraft requirements put some
prohibitions on such increases. Now the other issue that often occurs in aircraft is that quite often an aircraft as you know, it has to fly which means that it has to
take off, it has to climb, it goes through cruise operation and it has to come back and land. So during the entire process of operations the engine has to continuously
operate at various operating condition. And as a result of which it has to create more power or less power during all these operations. Now as a result of that the
power input to the propeller from the main shaft is finally the consideration and that is referred to as the brake horse power. That power finally supplied to the
propeller. Now this work done and heat transaction of the engine has to be controlled and it has to be changed with the operation of the aircraft and it can be
changed with fuel flow into the cylinder. Now that is the primary control of the engine. The fuel flow and the fuel control provide the engine control primararly.

Now what we can see from here from the thermodynamic cycle diagram, version of the real cycle that we have seen before in the P-V diagram, that if you have the
fuel supply that is reduced, the work done will be reduced. So that reduced work done and quite often aircraft could do with the reduced power, especially when it
is cruising. On the other hand you may need to have more power when the aircraft is climbing. So it has to climb from low altitude to high altitude and you would
have to pump more fuel into the cylinder and you would need to get more power. So as a result of which the piston has to operate differential or different kinds of
fuel flow. Now the fuel flow that is considered depending on the property of fuel, most correct is often referred to as a stoichiometric ratio and that is the most
correct fuel air ratio that needs to be supplied to the engine. It depends on the fuel and every fuel depending on the chemical composition as identifies
stoichiometric fuel air ratio. Quite often around this ratio there is a safe fuel air ratio zone that can be identified and the aircraft has to operate within this fuel air
ratio zone. That is the reduction or increase of fuel air ratio has to stay within this safe zone, so that the engine continues to operate. If you go outside the zone, the
engine could actually get blown out that means the compression process would get blown off and engine would get stop operating. Hence it is necessary that you
stay within this fuel air ratio all the time during the entire operation. So now when we talk about entire operation which is said that the entire operation means it
has to aid the aircraft to fly, it has to take off, it has to cruise, it has to climb and during the world war 1 and 2 many of the aircrafts are actually have been used for
military purposes which mean they have to do all manoeuvre and during the entire all this manoeuvre and finally landing of course the engine has be supplied the
fuel in a controlled manner within the stoichiometric ratio defined by the chemical property of the fuel. If you can do that then the engine is in a position to
continuously supply power to the aircraft during the entire flight spectrum. Now to do that it is necessary that you supply power within the stoichiometric ratio,
which means the engine would be operating under the lean air fuel ratio or rich fuel air ratio. If it is too lean, it would have a lean blow out, if it too rich it would
have a rich blow out. So that is the danger which we are talking about and you will have no work done out of this cycle. Now quite often the way the engine is
designed and put on an aircraft during its entire cruise operates at lean air fuel ratio. During which as you can see the fuel consumption would be less which is
good that the amount of fuel carried in an aircraft would carried further. So the engine is to be designed such that during the cruise it would always operate under
lean fuel air ratio. Now this means that the actual working cycle changes with fuel air ratio. Each fuel air ratio then actually produces one real cycle. And as a
result of which one can say that every engine during its entire fight spectrum is operating essentially in a variable cycle manner. That means the cycle of the engine
is actually changing depending on the fuel air ratio and the work done capability. And hence it is effectively becomes variable cycle engine. Effectively all engine
that are operating on an aircraft and goes through the entire spectrum of flight operates on essentially variable cycle mode. Of course there are terms like variable
engine cycle engines which have now many people are trying to develop that means something quite different from what we are talking about. What we are talking
about is a normal engine put on an aircraft and during its entire process of flying actually undergoes variable cycle operations. So this is what we mean at this
moment that every engine operates on variable engine mode. Let us look at the efficiency that we have talked about, the finally engine has to fly the aircraft and it
has to actually power a propeller. The power developed supplied to the propeller creates the propeller the thrust power. This thrust power is actually required by the
aircraft what the engine supplies is the engine shaft brake horse power. This is referred to as BHP. And this is available at the end of the shaft. Quite often the shaft
operates through a gear box. So there is a certain amount of loss of power in the gear box, and what is supplied to the propeller is BHP. What is created by the
engine is IHP. So the ratio of those two is essentially referred to as the mechanical efficiency of the engine which is as you have seen is different from earlier
considered, the thermal efficiency of the engine, which is born out of thermodynamic considerations. This is the mechanical efficiency of the engine. But BHP is
what the propeller gets. And then propeller creates thrust. So that thrust if you consider into thrust power the ratio of the two actually gives the propeller efficiency.
So we have three efficiencies now. One we have referred to as thermodynamic thermal efficiency. Now there is a mechanical efficiency of transmission of power
from the engine to the propeller and finally the propeller efficiency by which the propeller creates thrust. So at the end of whole thrust creation it has to negotiate
through three different efficiencies and it is necessary for the aircraft power plant designers to keep in mind that all the three efficiencies need to be as high as
possible to get maximum utilisation of power that is create by the engine. Now if you look at, let us say all over again, the typical piston cylinder arrangement. As
we have seen here quickly, the cylinder, you know, this is the volume of the cylinder which we are talking about and the cylinder is often typified or specified by
the volume. And let us say that we have, let us say 6 different equal volumes of the cylinder. You could have cylinders made of any of these number of volumes put
together. So more the volume, more is the work capacity of the cylinder as we have seen before. This is what the initial engine mechanical designers will have to
decide what should be the volume of cylinder which creates work. And as a result of which within which the movement of the piston will have to be restricted. So
the movement of the piston is restricted within this and the volume of the cylinder or more specifically the volume of the displacement of the piston is what is to be
considered in creating the engine. So one could have the volume that is most appropriate or most optimised for a particular kind of aircraft on which those
cylinders would have to be arranged and put together to create an aggregate amount of power. Now let us look at an arrangement of cylinders. Let us take four
cylinders, the kind of thermodynamic arrangement we have, we have 4 stroke engine. So let us say that we have 4 cylinders. And let us look at 4 strokes that it has
to undergo. Now it is entirely possible that if you have 4 cylinder arrangement, each of these cylinders could be operating in a time standard manner that I
mentioned earlier. Let us say the first cylinder could be undergoing an air intake stroke. The second cylinder at the same instant could be undergoing compression
stroke. The third cylinder could be undergoing power stroke. And the fourth cylinder could be undergoing exhaust stroke. So the time stagger that I was talking
about is shown here in this diagram that if you have a cylinder arrangement in line or oppose to or X type, whatever you could have them staggered in a manner in
such a way that 4 stroke that the engines typically undergo can be operated simultaneously through these four cylinders and each of them supplying power to
central crank shaft. This is the kind of radial engine that often powers the small aircraft. Now this is the kind of shape that typically a radial engine would have to
be housed inside. You would have circular front body of the aircraft within which the radial engine would be housed inside and it would of course drive the
propeller. So the shape of the aircraft then comes into the picture and we need to know what would be the shape of the front part of the aircraft within which the
engine would go. And the other consideration that we have mentioned is the aggregate power that is required by the aircraft for flying its passenger or whatever
other material that we wants to fly. So the shape of the front body of the aircraft is what accommodates this radial kind of engine. This is an engine which is
nowadays being considered all over again. I mentioned earlier that this engine was completely ruled out for aircraft usages. However very recently some people
have started looking at the diesel engine, simply because of the thermodynamic consideration that we are talking about that diesel engine has more efficiency,
thermal efficiency and that is something which has triggered recent research in which people have tried to design diesel engine that is light, made of light alloys
and uses normal aircraft variety of gasoline and it can be used to power the propeller. This is the kind of engine that people are now trying to develop to make use
of fundamental thermodynamic consideration that diesel engine are more efficient because of high compression ratio. This is a design of 4 cylinder opposed IC
engine which shows the internal parts of the 4 cylinder IC engine and it powers one single crank shaft and powers the propellers. So this shows all the details of,
cut out of typical 4 cylinder opposed IC engine. This is a 4 bladed propeller you can see here that the shape of the aircraft again has detected the kind of engine it
should use. One can make a guess that the engine used here is the opposed type multi cylinder oppose type, probably 3 into 3. That is 6 cylinders in oppose
formation housed inside this fore body of the aircraft powering four bladed propeller. This is a very famous splitfire military aircraft used during the second world
war and it is a four bladed propeller. It has an engine here, which is a big engine probably 8 or 12 cylinders and this particular splitfire military aircraft use the
piston probe .and as I mentioned, military aircraft need to have all kinds of manoeuvring capabilities and as a result of which many of these configured to have
very good combination of aircraft and engine to aid the aircraft manoeuvre. Some of these need to be considered during the choice of the engine or design of the
engine itself so that they provide the continuous power during various manoeuvres of aircraft. This is very important for aircraft operations.
Once the amount of engine power required goes up, we have seen that we could have 6 cylinders, you could have 8 cylinders, you could have 10
cylinders and you could have 12 cylinders and you could have 9 cylinders and you have 9 into 2, 18 cylinders. So there are engines, piston probe engine where up
to 18 cylinders have been put together to power an aircraft. However if the aggregate power becomes more, it becomes more and more difficult to put together
more of these cylinders in which case one has to look for the some other solution which is not probably piston based. You need more power you need to have
engine that supplies the power. An aircraft engine may not be the piston engine, may not be the best aircraft engine in such circumstances. These are the situations
in which you then start looking for other alternative, and that is where the jet engine came in. After the second world war the requirement of power for the aircraft
to fly faster, for the aircraft to fly higher and the aircraft to become bigger to carry more passengers or more material or more cargo required more power. And the
bigger engines had not to be in the form of piston engines, they had to be in the form of gas turbine engines. And these gas turbine based engines are what finally
created today what we called turboprobs. That means the propeller remain the thrust making devise. But the engine that finally came to here not the propeller not
the piston engines, but the gas turbine engines. So the amount of aggregate power that an aircraft needs decides to what extend or what level that you can arrange
the piston engines and how many cylinders you can put together. And the at the end of the day if the amount of aggregate power required is more, then you have to
go outside the piston engine requirement, and if you look for other kind. So what is shown here is turboprob engine where supplier is a gas turbine engine. But the
thrust still the propeller. However we will continue to look at various kinds of piston engines and performances of piston engine in the next class and we shall see
how the piston engine performances can be estimated and we shall see the various kinds of ways by which the aircraft engineers have devised methods by which
the piston based engines continue to give good efficiency and good power supply during its flight. Much of the flight often happens at high altitude and we shall
see how aircraft engines are configured to create power at high altitude where the air is thin, the density of the air is thin, but the piston engine continues to give
good efficiency and good power supply. And we shall look into some of these aspects of engine design in the next class in which we shall consider the
performance of piston engines as used in aircrafts.
Supercharging of aircraft IC engines
In this lecture, we will be talking about IC engine operations with specific reference to the aircraft engine. IC engines as you know used in all kinds of
vehicles and many other operations. But when it comes to application in aircraft engines in basic power plant and power supplying unit, there are certain things
that need to be done to satisfy the needs of aircraft engine and for the needs of the flying the aircraft. Now as you know an aircraft particularly flies or cruises at
higher altitude quite often 5 km or even higher than that and as a result of which at that altitude the air density is very low and hence the air which is the working
medium of this kind of engine is very thin. So the air supply into the engine is actually much lower in case of mass flow. And hence we need to do something
about the fact that the air supply in mass flow is rather low. Now as we have seen in the earlier lectures, when the air mass flow supply is less or charge as we call
it is less, the power production also goes down. So if the power production goes down in the aircraft engine, if it falls short of power, the propeller which produces
thrust would not be able to produce the thrust that is required for aircraft to fly. And in such a case, aircraft would not be able to fly at all. In fact problems start
much earlier, when the aircraft starts climbing from take off from let us say sea level altitude to higher altitude as the air become thinner and thinner the power
supply goes down because of the fall in the mass flow. Now this is something which is typical of aircraft engine. This is not a problem with any other land based
applications. And hence the aircraft engineers have to do something to ensure that this problem does not create a problem when the aircraft is flying. So the aircraft
engine or IC engines used in aircraft do have slightly different configuration than the IC engines used in many or various land based operations. Let us take a look
at some of these things that typically done in aircraft engines. We will also look at how aircraft engine or IC engine is operated under part load conditions. We
dont use an IC engine all the time at its full throttle or full load conditions quite often you dont need so much of power. So you can operate under off design or
what is also known as part load condition. Under this condition how do they operate and how do they produce power and what are their characteristics. These are
few things that we will be looking up today as along with certain augmentation required for making this kind of IC engine useful for aircraft power plant. Let us
take a look at some of these issues in todays lecture. Now one of the things that we have seen is the density of the fresh charge which is going into the cylinder is
an important issues. That determines the amount of mass flow that is going in. And at the end this mass flow determines the amount of torque that is produced by
the engine. The other important parameter that affects the volumetric efficiency which we have defined earlier is the pressure and temperature of the outgoing
burnt gas, and then of course there are engineering issues which are the design of the intake and exhaust valves or the manifolds and the timing of the opening and
closing of intake and exhaust valves. Now these are the issues which have been engineered into the engines. So these are engineering issues and they need to be
done properly to ensure that you have a good volumetric efficiency which means it should be as close to 100% as possible so that you are getting best out of
engine size and shape. So volumetric efficiency essentially tells us how good you are making use of the engine given its shape and size already available. So these
are the things that a designer in terms of engineering product has to be very careful about before the engine is made operational to achieve high efficiency during
its actual operations. Now let us take a look at some of the things that we need to bother about. For example when the full throttle operation is going on as you can
see in this diagram, the air is now compressed along this .okay. And as we have seen earlier quite often the process of ignition or burning of the fuel may be
initiated little earlier. And if it is initiated much earlier this is how the graph would go, operation of combustion would be shown in the PV diagram. Which means
it has been started before TDC, and hence the graph would go in a curved manner, instead of a straight line as we normally see in an ideal cycle. On the other hand
the exhaust for example if it opens a little earlier the exhaust may have opened little earlier somewhere here and as a result of which you would have exhaust
operation initiated earlier and this would take a curved path and hence the exhaust would be happening at a higher pressure than the intake operation. This as we
know results in a certain amount of area that shows up over here and that area would actually would loss as for as power production is concerned. So the opening
and closing of throttle is an important issue. Now under the part load condition similar things would be happening, the work done over here in part throttle is
actually much less now than compared to full throttle operation. And in this situation if the opening or closing of the intake or exhaust occur much before the
actual time of their opening and closing, then a good amount of work would actually be lost in the process of the differential between the exhaust operation and the
intake operation. So that loop you see here is something that not available as the power output of the engine. This is again goes into the operation of the exhaust
and intake and as a result that would not be available in terms of BHP. This is one of the issues that come up when the operation of the exhaust the ignition and the
intake do not quite happen exactly ideally as we have seen in the ideal diagram. This actually shows the loop which we just talked about. In this as you can see
here in the full throttle condition if it happens nearly ideally, you have a very small loop over here. And as a result of which you can say that the power lost in the
process of intake, exhaust is rather small. On the other hand what can happen is under part throttle condition, this loop would become very big. Now as it is as we
have seen in the earlier diagram, the part throttle condition, the operational power available is actually on the lower side. And then if the power lost in the process
of intake exhaust is in the higher order. This could happen due to the fact that the opening of the intake valve could be earlier or closing of the exhaust valve could
be earlier. Now some of these issues affect the area of the loop that is shown over here, and if the area of the loop is higher that means more and more energy is
wasted by the fact that the operation of the intake and exhaust valves are not happening properly. So some of those issues need to be taken care of the engineering
aspect of the engine design and hence it shows up in the thermodynamic diagrams and as a result of which the engine power suffers. This is one of the issues that
we were talking about that delayed ignition, what happens when you have a delayed ignition. We just saw what happens if we have an early ignition. Suppose you
know this is what you would call normal ignition. Little earlier so that even when the compression process is being completed, the ignition is initiated. And as we
have seen this goes along the path. Now suppose the ignition is delayed. As a result of delayed ignition, the ignition process is much later and then the path that it
takes, it doesnt take along this. It quickly goes into this path, and as result of which this huge area that you see, shaded area is a loss of work with relation to the
indicated diagram or the ideal process one would have expected. So this loss of work is due to the fact that the ignition is delayed and not initiated at an
appropriate time. So there is an exact time at which the ignition needs to be is initiated. If it is delayed is going to give a lot of loss work from the engine. So that is
another issue that the ignition is to be timed exactly, otherwise large loss of work by the power stroke most likely to happen. Let us look at some of the issues again
due to the late opening or poor design of exhaust valve. This happens when for example, this is your normal exhaust. Okay. Now suppose your late exhaust valve
opening shows that its exhaust occurring around this. As a result of which this is the now exhaust path. Now this exhaust path as you can see well above the
exhaust path over here and this is situation, that means this much of extra work needs to be done during the exhaust operation. Now this extra work now not be
available as an output of the engine. This would be due to either late opening or poor design exhaust valve. There is a one small issue here that due to the late
exhaust, the path that it takes actually creates slight bit of gain in work which is shown here. And rest of the work is actually due to the loss of work. So there is a
very small gain in work, which is shown here. But the loss of work is of much higher order. And as result of which there is a large amount of loss of piston work
and a very small amount of increase of intake work and very small amount of gain in exhaust work. So total loss is of much higher order and as a result of which
total output of the engine could go down substantially. This is due to the fact that you have a late opening or poor design of exhaust valve operating within the
engine. This may happen due to various reasons and some of those reason needs to be looked into either by the designer or by the operator during its functioning.

The other issue is the poor intake design. We need to look at the fact that the intake operates ideally at a constant pressure and if the intake operates at a pressure
much lower that what it is scheduled to, we get inlet intake loop that is now much bigger than it should have been ideally. Now this inlet loop takes away the work
from the main engine in the process of pumping as it is shown here. And this intake pumping work now, extra intake pumping work now is not available as an
engine output. So the poor intake design often also leads to or poor operation of their intake valve often leads to loss of work which would not be available to the
engine BHP or engine output. So this is another issue which needs to be looked by the engineers who would design the engine. So the important performance
parameters that we need to look into or the heat release per unit mass of air, this is the quality of the fuel that you are putting into the engine. So the choice of the
fuel needs to be taken care of by the heat release capacity of the fuel. And the other is the quantity of the charge which is the mixture of air and fuel mixed in the
carburettor per stroke of the engine. Now heat release per unit mass of air is decided by the chemical composition and the working air fuel ratio. Chemical
composition is something which one needs to analyse before one makes a choice of the fuel and we have talked about the kind of fuel or aviation fuel that is
normally used in these days, high octane ratio fuel. And that was chosen because of the chemical properties. The other is the working air fuel ratio, and as we have
seen the working fuel air ratio actually can change from one operation point to other. This is something which the engine operators have some control over. The
ideal fuel air ratio is what we call normally the stoichiometric ratio. But quite often the operation happens at a ration which is slightly different from ideal
stoichiometric ratio. It could be slightly higher, or it could be slightly lower. And as long as it is within a certain zone of operation, safe zone of operation of fuel
air ratio and as long as it operates in that ratio, the ignition process would continue to happen in a normal fashion. Now this is with reference to the heat release
than all this will decide the heat release rate per unit mass of air as it is inducted into the cylinder. The other thing that we will decide that the amount of power that
is coming out, the quantity of the charge. The thermodynamics always gives us the values in terms of power produced per unit mass flow. However the total power
produced is always dependent on the mass flow that is going inside the cylinder or inside the engine as a whole. And hence the quantity of the charge that is going
in decides the power that you would actually get. Now this is one of the issues that you would need to look into with specific reference to aircraft engines. Because
in aircraft engine the quantity of charge that is going in, goes down with increase of altitude. As you go to higher and higher altitude, you would be using the same
fuel. So its heat release rate probably remains of the same order, but the mass of the air is going down, and the quantity of the charge going down. So we need to
look into these issues with specific reference to aircraft engine. In aircraft engine this issue of charge or mass of charge is taken care of or compensated for with the
change of altitude by an additional unit called supercharger. This is basically a booster which is used before the chare air fuel mixture enters the cylinder. Now this
cylinder is filled above the ambient pressure with help of the supercharger. Hence the density of the air is now higher than the ambient density. And hence the
weight or mass of air that is introduced inside the cylinder per cycle is greater than in the supercharged case. So if you dont have supercharging this mass of air
that is going in would continuously goes down when you reach higher altitude, and it would continue to go down when you increase the altitude. So you need a
supercharger to compensate the decrease of the ambient pressure and ambient density. And this is where the supercharger for aircraft engine comes into the picture.
Now as you know the volume of operation would remain same for the same engine. So when you apply the volumetric efficiency, the net work done would be
higher than that of naturally aspirated engine which means un supercharged engine. So you need supercharger to get more and more work done for the same
engine as it goes to higher and higher altitude. Let us see how that actually happens. If you have supercharged engine, typically you would be using some kind of
centrifugal blower to boost the density or the pressure that is going inside the cylinder and this boosting is done after the air and charge has been mixed and before
it enters the main cylinder, before it is supplied to main cylinder. Now this is a separate unit, and the supercharger is a separate unit from the basic IC engine and as
I said it is used specifically for aircraft engine. Now let us look at this diagram, we will see when you have un supercharged or what is often called naturally
aspirated engine, you are basic indicated diagram would actually go along the dotted line. But as soon as you are applying supercharging, your basic intake now go
down to higher pressure, and then your compression would take to a much higher pressure and hence your power stoke would be actually occurring at a higher
pressure. So the mean effective pressure you are talked about would now be occurring at a much higher pressure, value of MEP would be much higher for this
cycle compared to this dotted cycle which is a un supercharged engine. And as a result of which you can well imagine now that the power produced by the
supercharged engine would be of much higher order. And this is exactly shown in this thermodynamic PV diagram, that the supercharger actually boosts the
performance to a much higher level. How high it can be depends on the amount of supercharging that is available with engine. In all this time the fuel used is same
and is introduced or injected into the cylinder in the same manner. So there is no change in the way the fuel is used or the kind of fuel is used only that the air
charge as used as a working medium is supercharged or boosted in its pressure and density to a higher value and that allows us to pro more power and that may be
available to aircraft power plant. Let us take a look at some of the issues that are related to, the effect of supercharging at sea level and at altitude. Now as I have
mentioned you can use an engine both at full throttle or at part throttle depending on the amount of power that you actually make use of or you need to fly an
aircraft in case of an aircraft engine. Now what happens is when you are at sea level, if you have un supercharged full throttle, your characteristics would move
along this line and when you go to high altitude the un supercharged full throttle characteristics would continue to go down along this line with increase of altitude
and a result of which your brake horse power would continue to go down. So when you are at sea level, at full throttle and supercharge as your manifold absolute
pressure goes up, your power production goes up. Then as soon as you move at high altitude the aircraft starts climbing, and altitude is gained the power
production continues to start going down and let us say at cruise your power production is somewhere over here and one has to very quickly figure out whether
this power production is sufficient for flying the aircraft. In most cases this power production will probably found insufficient for flying the aircraft and thats
where the supercharger now comes in. If you have a supercharger, the supercharged power production would go along this line. It would go to a higher value and
then if you move the altitude you could have high supercharging or low supercharging and it could move along this line along which you have constant manifold
absolute pressure MAP, and then this is your still working at part throttle and then you can open up the throttle and go to full throttle because you need to conserve
power, you need to get more power to get aircraft fly and with change altitude, your air is thinning down. So even with supercharging air will continue to thin
down and as a result the air mass flow going into the engine will continue to go down. But it will go down now at a much higher value than what we had seen in
un supercharged case. And as a result of which this full throttle now allows you to produce more power than you can get for un supercharged engine. And if you
are able to create high supercharging you can boost the power somewhere over here to even higher value at full throttle. So you can apply high supercharging, this
was with low supercharging and you can go to even that means second booster for example, you can have two superchargers and you can go to even higher power
production and take the power production somewhere over here at very high altitude if the need arises. So the combination of supercharging and use of low
supercharging or high supercharging, which means you can have two superchargers allows you to create more power during the aircraft operation at high altitudes.
In all these, what we have considered whether the engine is operating at constant rpm and they are operating at const fuel air ratio, those also can be varied. But we
are not considered those variations in this particular diagram. And as a result of which as you can see now, the supercharger give immense amount of power
boosting to the aircraft engine, starting at sea level, going at higher altitude you can produce more power either through single supercharger or through a double
supercharging operation to get more power at high altitude operations. So the supercharging produces additional work that may be extracted from the exhaust
gases by expanding them to atmosphere through a turbine. So the question now is how do you run the supercharger to produce this boosting of intake pressure and
density. It is done by running in with the help of turbine and the question is how you run the turbine. The turbine is run by the exhaust gas that is coming out of the
engine and that is fed into the turbine. Remember the exhaust gas that is coming out of the engine is still at a reasonable high temperature and at reasonable high
pressure. So if you allow it to run through a turbine, it will produce certain amount of power and this power then can be used to run the supercharger or booster
which as I have mentioned earlier is basically centrifugal compressor and hence the power supply to the supercharger can be done with the help of turbine which is
done by the help of the exhaust gas that is coming out. The aircraft, when it goes to higher altitude, increases the pressure and this allows the manifold pressure to
be either held to design value close to the design value for which the engine was designed for or something very near to that value and as a result of which you
continue to get good amount of power that the engine is originally designed for. So many of the superchargers are often called turbo superchargers, and this
supercharger plus turbine configuration, the rpm of this can be varied by adjusting the turbine discharge nozzle to produce pressure ratio of the turbine so that the
turbine power production can be varied to run the supercharger. So the whole turbine supercharger combination also be controlled separately by controlling the
turbine discharge nozzle so that the pressure ratio produced by the supercharger can also be varied depending on the need of the engine at that particular altitude.
So the turbo supercharger has control systems of its own independent of the engine control and as a result of which the amount of supercharging that you do to
boost the engine can also be varied depending on the need of the aircraft when it is flying. The supercharger delivery pressure is given by supercharger pressure
ratio and this is the pressure at the turbo supercharger exit divided by the ram pressure outside of the air scoop. This arrangement can maintain a constant engine
BHP or almost constant engine BHP from sea level to very high altitude. So the engine continues to give nearly its design power production and this operating
altitude is determined by the maximum allowable rpm of the supercharger. So which means the aircraft engine can now operate at higher and higher altitude
because of the supercharging that is available and the final altitude at which it can operate, the aircraft can fly is now determined by the supercharging capacity and
the maximum available supercharger turbine combine. So not only the power as boosted now you can fly the aircraft at even high altitude which has an advantage
as we know, that higher the altitude at which you fly the aircraft lesser is the drag experienced by the aircraft and lesser is the power actually required to fly the
aircraft and if you required less power to fly the aircraft your continuous fuel consumption is also going to be low. So all those gains can be actually factored into
the aircraft mission or aircraft flight schedule if you have a supercharger. So for a supercharged aircraft can fly at a higher altitude to effect the net gains that come
from flying at a high altitude and this is something that typical of aircraft engine normally not necessary in most of the land based operation. So the aircraft
engines typically have superchargers, which are designed to operate at high altitude. It is normally not necessary when it is cruising at low altitude or when it is
taking off, it is necessary flying at higher altitude and as I mentioned to at what altitude an aircraft can fly would actually determined by the capacity of the
supercharger. So the supercharger is designed separately to fit into the aircraft engine and fit into the need of the aircraft and take the aircraft to higher altitudes.
Let us look at what happens if you have a supercharger and what happens to the PV diagram of the cycle. You have a supercharger which again is some kind of
aero thermodynamic unit. Hence it needs to have certain amount of thermodynamic basics of its own for its to be included in the engine configuration. So if you
look at this you will find that the basic engine which operates, let us say at AB which is the intake to the compression system and the comp line is B C as we have
seen normally in most of the cycles that we have looked at and the work required to do those compression process is then given by ABCD. And that is the area that
the compression work that needs to be done in the compression process of the engine. Now this source of this work is the turbine. Now this turbine is supplying
power to compression process that has been supercharged. Now the turbine work, it extract work from the outgoing burnt gas that has been exhausted from the
main engine and the turbine work can also be represented in the same PV diagram and let us say that the turbine work is represented by ZYXW or you know, this
particular area and as we can see now that this work done by the turbine then needs to be equal to this work that is needed from the intake. So as long as this work
done by the turbine as represented by the PV diagram here is equal to this work shown by ABCD. We have combination of turbine and compressor that can do this
supercharging job and aid the engine in operating at high altitude. So this is the supercharging PV diagram separate from the engine PV diagram as we have seen
before and this need to have compiled to the laws to thermodynamics as you have done in detail earlier. So supercharging operation by itself has to conform to
basic laws of thermodynamics as you have done before in the earlier lectures. The exhaust gas which enters the turbine along the line let us say WX, then expands
along the XY line. So this is how the turbine operates. So the intake starts from AB and then goes up to CD. The exhaust starts from W, and then it enters to WX. It
expands along the line XY, and does the work. That is the working of the turbine and working of the compression from B to C working of the turbine in this PV
diagram is from X to Y and then pushes out the work of the gas along YZ line. If the turbine is used only to drive the compressor, the areas as I mentioned the
areas ABCD and the areas AWXYZ must be equal. If the turbine work fall short then the turbo compressor combination would slow down. If the turbine produces
more work, then the turbo compressor combination would speed up to higher speeds whether that is required or whether that is warranted or allowed is to be
decided by the engine operator. So if the turbine work is excessive, the turbine discharge nozzle may be throttled raising the line YZ until the area YXWXYZ is
again equal to that one way of reducing the turbine work if it comes out to be doing more work as I mentioned earlier you have the discharge nozzle to control the
amount of work that has been done by the turbine which runs the compressor which is the supercharger. So that the turbine and the supercharger work are equal to
each other, no more and no less. This is how the supercharger actually functions and that is what shown here thermodynamically in the PV diagram. If we look at
the way it is shown, you have a supercharger over here before the flow actually gets into the cylinder as I mentioned it is normally done after the carburettor where
the air and fuel is mixed in the correct proportion or the wanted proportion for that particular operation and then the fuel air mixture, which we call as charge is
supercharged. One of the possible supercharging is in the order of 6:1 ratio at high altitude. That is the kind of supercharging you probably need. And then boost
the density before it is fed into the cylinder. Now what happens is the power output or the brake horse power can be now be shown with the altitude. It is expected
that all the time go down. But the un-supercharged power goes down along this line and the supercharged power goes along the upper line and in between there is
a line which is actually used for the purpose of supercharging itself and as a result of which one can say the net output is given along this line. So supercharger
nearly restores the power output of the engine and typically double supercharging or what is often known as high supercharging is used essentially only for the
climb operation of the aircraft. It may not be necessary actually during the cruise operation of the aircraft. It is necessary for the climb operation where you have to
take the aircraft from low altitude to high altitude, along with its passengers, cargo and you need excess power overcome the drag of the aircraft. The differential
between the thrust produced by the engine or power plant and drag experienced by the aircraft takes the aircraft to higher altitude through the climb operation. So
during the climbing the thrust produced by the engine or power plant has to be more than that of the drag experienced by the aircraft. Now this differential
produces the climb operation. So during the climb you need that excess power to produce excess thrust and hence during the climb operation one may use double
supercharger or high supercharging. Once you reach the cruise operation, you dont need the high operation, high supercharging anymore and you need only as
much power as the aircraft experiencing as thrust because cruising, the thrust is equal to drag for straight and level flight. So during the cruise operation, you need
to produce only as much thrust as experienced by the aircraft as drag and extra thrust is not required anymore. Hence during that operation, the second
supercharger can be switched off and aircraft can operate only with the single supercharger or what we can call may be low supercharger. So that is how the
supercharger is used for various aircraft operation during the climb and later on during the cruise flight of the aircraft. So let us sum up and say that you can have
single stage supercharger which is good enough for the aircraft to fly at high altitude. You may have two stage supercharger which allows additional boosting
during the climb operation or you can have variable speed supercharger where the supercharger speed can be varied to high or medium and as we were discussing
just now that you may need to do at high speed supercharging to get high supercharging during climb and then settle down to medium supercharging for medium
to low supercharging during its cruise operation of the aircraft. Most of the superchargers are centrifugal flow blowers or compressor or often compression ratio as
we mentioned, 3, 4, 5 or 6. And this kind of machine is being used for superchargers right from the beginning. However it is possible that if you need low
supercharging you can probably use axial flow compressor into a three stage can produce sufficient pressure rise inside the supercharging facility to boost the
performance of the aircraft. So you can have number of choices in the choice of the supercharger depending on the size of the engine, depending on the kind of
aircraft power scheduling that you need to do and of course depending on the altitude finally you expect the engine to be used for aircraft thrust making device. So
these are the various choices that engine designer has in choice of the supercharger and as you can see, here a number of choices for making a choice for
supercharging of aircraft engine. One of the choices that typically an engine designer would have is turbo supercharger and one of the possibilities is that one can
use turbo supercharger with what is also known as intercooler. Now in this diagram the arrangement is shown, you have the engine, we are showing let us say two
cylinders. You have the basic engine which of course runs the propeller, which is we know produces the thrust. And this is the carburettor which of course
combines the fuel and air and produces the charge. That goes inside the cylinders and then you have normally gear box which runs the supercharger which is of
course which we know normally centrifugal compressor. Now what can be done, as the supercharger is operating, and the supercharger runs with the help of
turbine, this turbine runs from the gas that is coming out of the exhaust pipe. So instead of gas going straight away out of the atmosphere the exhaust pipe takes to
the turbine and runs the turbine and then from the turbine it goes out through a small nozzle which I have mentioned can have a variable geometry capacity or
variable throttle capacity to control the operation of the turbine and through the operation of the turbine control you can have control of the supercharger operation.
So this how the turbine supercharger combination is brought to a certain amount of control through the outlet control of the turbine, now what can be done is you
see from the supercharger the air is coming into the supercharger, let us say the mass fuel and then it is being fed into the pipe through which it goes to the
carburettor and then through the carburettor, it is fed into the cylinder. Now on the path of its going into the carburettor the air can be further cooled with the help
of ambient atmospheric air which is at high altitude, quite cool. So this cool air can now be used to cool the supercharged air because in the process of
supercharging if you have a compression the air actually get heated up. So along with the rise in pressure, the thermodynamics tells us very clearly that through the
supercharging process the pressure is gone up, the temperature is also gone up. So from the thermodynamics, we know that if the temperature is gone up the
performance of the engine would actually suffer little. The higher the temperature of the intake air, lower would be the performance. As a result of which in fact
lower will be the density of the air coming. So one of the ways of further boosting, the engine performance is by cooling and this is often calling an inter cooler.
That is a cooler which is an intermediate between the supercharger and the carburettor. And this intermediate cooling simply called intercooler and this intercooler
cools the air. The air, you remember is still compressed to high pressure compensating for higher altitude, now its cooled, it is just passed through intercooler and

gets cooled. And this now compressed but cooled air is now fed into the carburettor and then the fuel air mixture is created which then goes inside the cylinder.
And as a result of which we have a kind of double boosting of engine performance, first it is cooled by the supercharger and then it is boosted by cooling the air
and all these concepts as you know comes from the basic understanding of the thermodynamics of the engine. So you need to always refer back to basic
thermodynamics to understand why these things are done and of course finally they have to be engineered into the engine configuration so that they operate
properly during the actual functioning. So intercooler is a possibility that has been used sometimes to boost the engine performance little more if the engine is
operating at very high altitudes. So intercooler is an additional method by which turbo supercharger can be further compensated for its heating that occurs through
the turbo supercharger unit. So these are some of the combinations through which the aircraft engine often gets operation boosted or augmented in its flight during
the climb, during high altitude flight and some of these as I mentioned are typical of aircraft engine, they do not normally happen or necessary during the land
bases operation. So you probably wont see them in most of the land based engine or land based vehicles. Sometimes you may have heard or used in the raising
engine where of course for raising purposes this kind of boosters are used to augment the power for the raising engines. In the next class we will look at all the
things we have done with reference to the various aircraft engine and try to solve some problems using the basic thermodynamic and basic engineering parameters
that we have defined and see whether these things can be put together in solving of realistic problems and I will also bring few problems for you to solve yourself
and this is what we will be doing in the next class. so it will be some kind of tutorial we will indulge in, little be tough problem solving using the basic
thermodynamic cycles and aircraft engine parameters that we have discussed in the earlier class.