Different Types of Jet Engines

Jet Engines - Introduction to Turbojets

Turbojet Engine The basic idea of the turbojet engine is simple. Air taken in from an opening in the front of the engine is compressed to 3 to 12 times its original pressure in compressor. Fuel is added to the air and burned in a combustion chamber to raise the temperature of the fluid mixture to about 1,100F to 1,300 F. The resulting hot air is passed through a turbine, which drives the compressor. If the turbine and compressor are efficient, the pressure at the turbine discharge will be nearly twice the atmospheric pressure, and this excess pressure is sent to the nozzle to produce a high-velocity stream of gas which produces a thrust. Substantial increases in thrust can be obtained by employing an afterburner. It is a second combustion chamber positioned after the turbine and before the nozzle. The afterburner increases the temperature of the gas ahead of the nozzle. The result of this increase in temperature is an increase of about 40 percent in thrust at takeoff and a much larger percentage at high speeds once the plane is in the air. The turbojet engine is a reaction engine. In a reaction engine, expanding gases push hard against the front of the engine. The turbojet sucks in air and compresses or squeezes it. The gases flow through the turbine and make it spin. These gases bounce back and shoot out of the rear of the exhaust, pushing the plane forward.

Turboprop Jet Engine

A turboprop engine is a jet engine attached to a propellor. The turbine at the back is turned by the hot gases, and this turns a shaft that drives the propellor. Some small airliners and transport aircraft are powered by turboprops.

Like the turbojet, the turboprop engine consists of a compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine, the air and gas pressure is used to run the turbine, which then creates power to drive the compressor. Compared with a turbojet engine, the turboprop has better propulsion efficiency at flight speeds below about 500 miles per hour. Modern turboprop engines are equipped with propellers that have a smaller diameter but a larger number of blades for efficient operation at much higher flight speeds. To accommodate the higher flight speeds, the blades are scimitarshaped with swept-back leading edges at the blade tips. Engines featuring such propellers are called propfans. Hungarian, Gyorgy Jendrassik who worked for the Ganz wagon works in Budapest designed the very first working turboprop engine in 1938. Called the Cs-1, Jendrassik's engine was first tested in August of 1940; the Cs-1 was abandoned in 1941 without going into production due to the War. Max Mueller designed the first turboprop engine that went into production in 1942.

Turbofan Jet Engine

A turbofan engine has a large fan at the front, which sucks in air. Most of the air flows around the outside of the engine, making it quieter and giving more thrust at low speeds. Most of today's airliners are powered by turbofans. In a turbojet all the air entering the intake passes through the gas generator, which is composed of the compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine. In a turbofan engine only a portion of the incoming air goes into the combustion chamber. The remainder passes through a fan, or low-pressure compressor, and is ejected directly as a "cold" jet or mixed with the gas-generator exhaust to produce a "hot" jet. The objective of this sort of bypass system is to increase thrust without increasing fuel consumption. It achieves this by increasing the total air-mass flow and reducing the velocity within the same total energy supply.

Turboshaft Engines

This is another form of gas-turbine engine that operates much like a turboprop system. It does not drive a propellor. Instead, it provides power for a helicopter rotor. The turboshaft engine is designed so that the speed of the helicopter rotor is independent of the rotating speed of the gas generator. This permits the rotor speed to be kept constant even when the speed of the generator is varied to modulate the amount of power produced.

Ramjets

Ramjet Engine The most simple jet engine has no moving parts. The speed of the jet "rams" or forces air into the engine. It is essentially a turbojet in which rotating machinery has been omitted. Its application is restricted by the fact that its compression ratio depends wholly on forward speed. The ramjet develops no static thrust and very little thrust in general below the speed of sound. As a consequence, a ramjet vehicle requires some form of assisted takeoff, such as another aircraft. It has been used primarily in guided-missile systems. Space vehicles use this type of jet.

Jet Engines
That which separates an airplane from a glider is the presence of some sort of engine or motor. Before the invention of powered flight by the Wright brothers, gliders and balloons were the only way to fly. The Wright brothers took the idea of a glider and added an engine to it. They riggd the engine up to turn a propeller and the prop. pulled the airplane into the air. From that time on, until the advent of W.W.II, the propeller was the only way known of providing thrust for an airplane. When W.W.II broke out, both sides rushed to design the best aircraft possible. During the developement process of designing faster fighter aircraft, German engineers developed a new type of engine capable of propelling an airplane at immense speeds and has since become the only known for getting an airplane up to, and beyond, the speed of sound. There are a number of different types of jet engine, these are:
y Ramjet: Ramjets work by having air pushed in to a chamber where it is compressed. In this chamber the air, which was heated by compression, is mixed with fuel. The fuel is ignited by the heated air and creates hot expanded gas is forced out of the exhaust. The ramjet cannot start by itself its needs to gain speed to compress the air, so it must be started out. The ramjet is generally not used in planes because it runs at a high steady speed. Although the it is used in such things as cruise missiles.

y Turbojet: In a turbojet the air is sucked into the intake and pushed into the compression chamber by a series of compression fans. It is then mixed with fuel that is added through fuel injectors. Then the high temperature of the hot air ignites the fuel which creates hot gas which rapidly expands and pushes

towards the exhaust. This gas is pushed past a turbine, the turbine is what turns the compression fans. After that the remaining gas is forced out of the exhaust and creates the thrust of the jet. A jet can create anywhere from 2,500 to 30,000 pounds of force. y Pulse Jet:The pules jet was one of the earliest forms of jet propulsion. It was used by the Germans during W.W.II in their V-1 rockets. The theory it works on is very simple. It has inlet valves that let in air. These valves are spring loaded in the open position. The valves let in air that is heated by burning fuel. These burning gases expand and force the inlet valve closed and the gases are then pushed out the outlet duct to produce thrust. In the absence of burning gas the inlet valves open and let in more air and the cycle repeats. This charge then fire procedure give it a pulse of thrust and then a short stop thus its name the pulse jet.

y Turbofan:Another commonly used kind of jet propulsion is the turbofan. This kind of jet is used on most large jet liners such as the 747, 727, 767, and 737. This engine is basically the same as the turbo jet except the central fan axle is also connected to a large fan in front of the engine. This fan pushes air into the jet but it also pushes air around the jet creating more thrust.

Jet engines move the airplane forward with a great force that is produced by a tremendous thrust and causes the plane to fly very fast. All jet engines, which are also called gas turbines, work on the same principle. The engine sucks air in at the front with a fan. A compressor raises the pressure of the air. The compressor is made up of fans with many blades and attached to a shaft. The blades compress the air. The compressed air is then sprayed with fuel and an electric spark lights the mixture. The burning gases expand and blast out through the nozzle, at the back of the engine. As the jets of gas shoot backward, the engine and the aircraft are thrust forward. The image below shows how the air flows through the engine. The air goes through the core of the engine as well as around the core. This causes some of the air to be very hot and some to be cooler. The cooler air then mixes with the hot air at the engine exit area.

This is a picture of how the air flows through an engine

What is Thrust?

Thrust is the forward force that pushes the engine and, therefore, the airplane forward. Sir Isaac Newton discovered that for "every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." An engine uses this principle. The engine takes in a large volume of air. The air is heated and compressed and slowed down. The air is forced through many spinning blades. By mixing this air with jet fuel, the temperature of the air can be as high as three thousand degrees. The power of the air is used to turn the turbine. Finally, when the air leaves, it pushes backward out of the engine. This causes the plane to move forward.

Parts of a Jet Engine

Fan - The fan is the first component in a turbofan. The large spinning fan sucks in large quantities of air. Most blades of the fan are made of titanium. It then speeds this air up and splits it into two parts. One part continues through the "core" or center of the engine, where it is acted upon by the other engine components. The second part "bypasses" the core of the engine. It goes through a duct that surrounds the core to the back of the engine where it produces much of the force that propels the airplane forward. This cooler air helps to quiet the engine as well as adding thrust to the engine. Compressor - The compressor is the first component in the engine core. The compressor is made up of fans with many blades and attached to a shaft. The compressor squeezes the air that enters it into progressively smaller areas, resulting in an increase in the air pressure. This results in an increase in the energy potential of the air. The squashed air is forced into the combustion chamber. Combustor - In the combustor the air is mixed with fuel and then ignited. There are as many as 20 nozzles to spray fuel into the airstream. The mixture of air and fuel catches fire. This provides a high temperature, high-energy airflow. The fuel burns with the oxygen in the compressed air, producing hot expanding gases. The inside of the combustor is often made of ceramic materials to provide a heat-resistant chamber. The heat can reach 2700. Turbine - The high-energy airflow coming out of the combustor goes into the turbine, causing the turbine blades to rotate. The turbines are linked by a shaft to turn the blades in the compressor and to spin the intake fan at the front. This rotation takes some energy from the highenergy flow that is used to drive the fan and the compressor. The gases produced in the combustion chamber move through the turbine and spin its blades. The turbines of the jet spin around thousands of times. They are fixed on shafts which have several sets of ball-bearing in between them. Nozzle - The nozzle is the exhaust duct of the engine. This is the engine part which actually produces the thrust for the plane. The energy depleted airflow that passed the turbine, in addition to the colder air that bypassed the engine core, produces a force when exiting the nozzle that acts to propel the engine, and therefore the airplane, forward. The combination of the hot air and cold air are expelled and produce an exhaust, which causes a forward thrust. The nozzle may be preceded by a mixer, which combines the high temperature air coming from the engine core with

the lower temperature air that was bypassed in the fan. The mixer helps to make the engine quieter.
The First Jet Engine - A Short History of Early Engines

Sir Isaac Newton in the 18th century was the first to theorize that a rearward-channeled explosion could propel a machine forward at a great rate of speed. This theory was based on his third law of motion. As the hot air blasts backwards through the nozzle the plane moves forward. Henri Giffard built an airship which was powered by the first aircraft engine, a three-horse power steam engine. It was very heavy, too heavy to fly. In 1874, Felix de Temple, built a monoplane that flew just a short hop down a hill with the help of a coal fired steam engine. Otto Daimler, in the late 1800's invented the first gasoline engine. In 1894, American Hiram Maxim tried to power his triple biplane with two coal fired steam engines. It only flew for a few seconds. The early steam engines were powered by heated coal and were generally much too heavy for flight. American Samuel Langley made a model airplanes that were powered by steam engines. In 1896, he was successful in flying an unmanned airplane with a steam-powered engine, called the Aerodrome. It flew about 1 mile before it ran out of steam. He then tried to build a full sized plane, the Aerodrome A, with a gas powered engine. In 1903, it crashed immediately after being launched from a house boat. In 1903, the Wright Brothers flew, The Flyer, with a 12 horse power gas powered engine. From 1903, the year of the Wright Brothers first flight, to the late 1930s the gas powered reciprocating internal-combustion engine with a propeller was the sole means used to propel aircraft. It was Frank Whittle, a British pilot, who designed the first turbo jet engine in 1930. The first Whittle engine successfully flew in April, 1937. This engine featured a multistage compressor, and a combustion chamber, a single stage turbine and a nozzle. The first jet airplane to successfully use this type of engine was the German Heinkel He 178. It was the world's first turbojet powered flight. General Electric for the US Army Air Force built the first American jet plane. It was the XP-59A experimental aircraft.

Types of Jet Engines

Turbojets

The basic idea of the turbojet engine is simple. Air taken in from an opening in the front of the engine is compressed to 3 to 12 times its original pressure in compressor. Fuel is added to the air and burned in a combustion chamber to raise the temperature of the fluid mixture to about 1,100F to 1,300 F. The resulting hot air is passed through a turbine, which drives the compressor. If the turbine and compressor are efficient, the pressure at the turbine discharge will be nearly twice the atmospheric pressure, and this excess pressure is sent to the nozzle to produce a high-velocity stream of gas which produces a thrust. Substantial increases in thrust can be obtained by employing an afterburner. It is a second combustion chamber positioned after the turbine and before the nozzle. The afterburner increases the temperature of the gas ahead of the nozzle. The result of this increase in temperature is an increase of about 40 percent in thrust at takeoff and a much larger percentage at high speeds once the plane is in the air. The turbojet engine is a reaction engine. In a reaction engine, expanding gases push hard against the front of the engine. The turbojet sucks in air and compresses or squeezes it. The gases flow through the turbine and make it spin. These gases bounce back and shoot out of the rear of the exhaust, pushing the plane forward.

Picture of Turbojet Engine

Turboprops

A turboprop engine is a jet engine attached to a propeller. The turbine at the back is turned by the hot gases, and this turns a shaft that drives the propeller. Some small airliners and transport aircraft are powered by turboprops.

Like the turbojet, the turboprop engine consists of a compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine, the air and gas pressure is used to run the turbine, which then creates power to drive the compressor. Compared with a turbojet engine, the turboprop has better propulsion efficiency at flight speeds below about 500 miles per hour. Modern turboprop engines are equipped with propellers that have a smaller diameter but a larger number of blades for efficient operation at much higher flight speeds. To accommodate the higher flight speeds, the blades are scimitarshaped with swept-back leading edges at the blade tips. Engines featuring such propellers are called propfans.

Picture of turboprop engine

Turbofans

A turbofan engine has a large fan at the front, which sucks in air. Most of the air flows around the outside of the engine, making it quieter and giving more thrust at low speeds. Most of today's airliners are powered by turbofans. In a turbojet all the air entering the intake passes through the gas generator, which is composed of the compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine. In a turbofan engine only a portion of the incoming air goes into the combustion chamber. The remainder passes through a fan, or low-pressure compressor, and is ejected directly as a "cold" jet or mixed with the gas-generator exhaust to produce a "hot" jet. The objective of this sort of bypass system is to increase thrust without increasing fuel consumption. It achieves this by increasing the total air-mass flow and reducing the velocity within the same total energy supply.

Picture of Turbofan Engine

Turboshafts

This is another form of gas-turbine engine that operates much like a turboprop system. It does not drive a propellor. Instead, it provides power for a helicopter rotor. The turboshaft engine is designed so that the speed of the helicopter rotor is independent of the rotating speed of the gas

generator. This permits the rotor speed to be kept constant even when the speed of the generator is varied to modulate the amount of power produced.

Picture of Turboshaft Engine

Ramjets

The most simple jet engine has no moving parts. The speed of the jet "rams" or forces air into the engine. It is essentially a turbojet in which rotating machinery has been omitted. Its application is restricted by the fact that its compression ratio depends wholly on forward speed. The ramjet develops no static thrust and very little thrust in general below the speed of sound. As a consequence, a ramjet vehicle requires some form of assisted takeoff, such as another aircraft. It has been used primarily in guided-missile systems. Space vehicles use this type of jet.

Picture of Ramjet Engine What's a Scramjet? 1.30.04 One thing has always been true about rockets: The farther and faster you want to go, the bigger your rocket needs to be. Why? Rockets combine a liquid fuel with liquid oxygen to create thrust. Take away the need for liquid oxygen and your spacecraft can be smaller or carry more payload. That's the idea behind a different propulsion system called "scramjet," or Supersonic Combustion Ramjet: The oxygen needed by the engine to combust is taken from the atmosphere passing through the vehicle, instead of from a tank onboard. The craft becomes smaller, lighter and faster. How fast? Researchers predict scramjet speeds could reach 15 times the speed of sound. An 18-hour trip to

Tokyo from New York City becomes a 2-hour flight. A look at one of NASA's developmental scramjets, the X-43A, undergoing ground testing. On August 16, 2002, the University of Queensland in Australia completed the first successful flight of a scramjet vehicle, reaching speeds of Mach 7, or seven times the speed of sound. NASA's Hyper-X program is working to develop scramjets into a practical technology. The X43A, a 12-foot long scramjet-powered research vehicle, was constructed by MicroCraft, Inc., now known as Alliant Techsystems, Inc. The company fabricated three X-43A aircraft for NASA, to be flown aboard modified Pegasus rockets developed by the Orbital Sciences Corporation. The Pegasus is dropped by a B-52 aircraft and launched to an altitude of over 90,000 feet, where the X-43A is released and flown under its own power. Each of the three vehicles appear identical but have slightly different oxygen intake designs, based on what speed their test flights are planned to accomplish. The first test flight of the X-43A, which took place on June 2, 2001, failed due to a stabilization problem with the booster rocket's directional fins. An artist's conception of the X-43A in flight. The vehicle will be tested at speeds up to Mach 10. The Hyper-X program is a joint project between the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. and Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. The next developmental flight of this system is scheduled for no earlier than February 21, 2004.