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The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, and a turbine. The compressed air from the compressor is heated by burning fuel in the combustion chamber and then allowed to expand through the turbine. The turbine exhaust is then expanded in the propelling nozzle where it is accelerated to high speed to provide thrust. Two engineers, Frank Whittle in the United Kingdom and Hans von Ohain in Germany, developed the concept independently into practical engines during the late 1930s.
Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain was a German physicist, engineer, and the designer of the first turbojet engine to power an aircraft. Together with Frank Whittle he is widely described as the co-inventor of the turbojet engine. Hans von Ohain was still a university student when in January 1930, Whittle filed his first patent for a turbojet engine. Von Ohain stated in his biography, that "My interest in jet propulsion began in the fall of 1933 when I was in my seventh semester at Göttingen University. I didn't know that many people before me had the same thought.". He quickly caught up with Whittle due to the support by Heinkel and his design, "an axial-flow engine as opposed to Sir Frank's centrifugal flow engine, that was eventually adopted by most manufacturers by the 1950's."
Centrifugal compressors, sometimes called impeller compressors or radial compressors, are a sub-class of dynamic axisymmetric work-absorbing turbomachinery.
The Rolls-Royce RB.41 Nene is a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine. The Nene was a complete redesign, rather than a scaled-up Rolls-Royce Derwent, with a design target of 5,000 lbf (22 kN), making it the most powerful engine of its era. First run in 1944, it was Rolls-Royce's third jet engine to enter production, and first ran less than 6 months from the start of design. It was named after the River Nene in keeping with the company's tradition of naming its jet engines after rivers.
The Rolls-Royce RB.37 Derwent is a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine, the second Rolls-Royce jet engine to enter production. It was an improved version of the Rolls-Royce Welland, which itself was a renamed version of Frank Whittle's Power Jets W.2B. Rolls-Royce inherited the Derwent design from Rover when they took over their jet engine development in 1943.
The Rolls-Royce RB.23 Welland was Britain's first production jet engine. It entered production in 1943 for the Gloster Meteor. The name Welland is taken from the River Welland, in keeping with the Rolls-Royce policy of naming early jet engines after rivers based on the idea of continuous flow, air through the engine and water in a river.
This article outlines the important developments in the history of the development of the air-breathing (duct) jet engine. Although the most common type, the gas turbine powered jet engine, was certainly a 20th-century invention, many of the needed advances in theory and technology leading to this invention were made well before this time.
The Metropolitan-Vickers F.2 is an early turbojet engine and the first British design to be based on an axial-flow compressor. It was an extremely advanced design for the era, using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine.
A jet engine performs by converting fuel into thrust. How well it performs is an indication of what proportion of its fuel goes to waste. It transfers heat from burning fuel to air passing through the engine. In doing so it produces thrust work when propelling a vehicle but a lot of the fuel is wasted and only appears as heat. Propulsion engineers aim to minimize the degradation of fuel energy into unusable thermal energy. Increased emphasis on performance improvements for commercial airliners came in the 1970s from the rising cost of fuel.
The Heinkel HeS 3 was the world's first operational jet engine to power an aircraft. Designed by Hans von Ohain while working at Heinkel, the engine first flew as the primary power of the Heinkel He 178, piloted by Erich Warsitz on 27 August 1939. Although successful, the engine had too little thrust to be really useful, and work started on the more powerful Heinkel HeS 8 as their first production design.
The Heinkel HeS 8 was an early jet engine designed by Hans von Ohain while working at Heinkel. It was the first jet engine to be financially supported by the RLM, bearing the official name 109-001. Had development continued it would have been known as the Heinkel 001, but it does not appear this was used in practice.
As the name suggests, gas turbine engine compressors provide the compression part of the gas turbine engine thermodynamic cycle. There are three basic categories of gas turbine engine compressor: axial compressor, centrifugal compressor and mixed flow compressor. A fourth, unusual, type is the free-piston gas generator, which combines the functions of compressor and combustion chamber in one unit.
Power Jets was a British company set up by Frank Whittle for the purpose of designing and manufacturing jet engines. The company was nationalised in 1944, and evolved into the National Gas Turbine Establishment.
The Power Jets W.1 was a British turbojet engine designed by Frank Whittle and Power Jets. The W.1 was built under contract by British Thomson-Houston (BTH) in the early 1940s. It is notable for being the first British jet engine to fly, as the "Whittle Supercharger Type W1", powering the Gloster E.28/39 on its maiden flight at RAF Cranwell on 15 May 1941. The W.1 was superseded by the Power Jets W.2.
The Power Jets W.2 was a British turbojet engine designed by Frank Whittle and Power Jets Ltd. Like the earlier Power Jets W.1, the reverse-flow combustion configuration included a double-sided centrifugal compressor, 10 combustion chambers and an axial-flow turbine with air-cooled disc. It entered production as the Rolls-Royce Welland and was the first UK jet engine to power operational aircraft, the Gloster Meteor.
The Westinghouse Aviation Gas Turbine Division (AGT) was established by Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1945 to continue the development and production of its turbo-jet gas turbine engines for aircraft propulsion under contract to the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. The AGT Division was headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, where it remained in operation until 1960 when Westinghouse decided to focus on industrial and electric utility gas turbines.
The Packard XJ49 was the first U.S. designed turbofan aircraft engine, and was developed by the Packard Motor Co. in the 1940s.
The Packard XJ41 was a turbojet aircraft engine developed by the Packard company in the mid-1940s.
The General Electric I-A was the first working jet engine in the United States, manufactured by General Electric (GE) and achieving its first run on April 18, 1942.
References
- ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 April 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The Early History of the Whittle Jet Propulsion Gas Turbine" The First James Clayton Lecture 1945, Air Commodore Frank Whittle, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London
- ↑ "The Development Of Jet And Turbine Aero Engines" 4th edition, Bill Gunston, Patrick Stephens 2006, ISBN 0 7509 4477 3, p.124
- ↑ "Not Much Of An Engineer" Sir Stanley Hooker, The Crowood Press Ltd., Marlborough 2005, ISBN 978-1853102851, p.72
- ↑ "Intake Aerodynamics" Second Edition, Seddon and Goldsmith, AIAA Inc., Reston 1999, ISBN 0-632-04963-4, p.30
- ↑ "World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines - 5th edition" by Bill Gunston, Sutton Publishing, 2006, p.160
- ↑ "Gas Turbine Aero-Thermodynamics" Sir Frank Whittle, Pergamon Press Ltd, London 1981, ISBN 978-0-08-026718-0, p.161
- ↑ "Genesis Of The Jet" John Golley, Airlife Publishing Ltd., Shrewsbury 1996, ISBN 1 85310 860 X, p.82
- ↑ The National Archive, AIR62/15
- ↑ Golley, John (1987). Whittle: The True Story. Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing Ltd. pp. 106–107, 114. ISBN 0906393825.
- ↑ "Gas Turbine Aero-Thermodynamics" Sir Frank Whittle, Pergamon Press Ltd, London 1981, ISBN 978-0-08-026718-0, p.166/7
- ↑ http://web.itu.edu.tr/aydere/history.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
- ↑ http://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/presidents-choice/jc12_1.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
- ↑ Information, Reed Business (27 November 1980). "New Scientist".
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