This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2013) |
A splitter plate is a component in some jet aircraft, used to control the airflow into the engine. Where the engine air intake is mounted partway back along the fuselage or under the wing, the splitter plate diverts the boundary layer away from the engine intake. It is a form of boundary layer control.
When a body, such as a wing or a fuselage, passes through a fluid such as the air, a boundary layer of fluid attaches to the body and moves along with it. If this layer enters the air intake of a jet engine, it can affect performance.
In order to stop this boundary layer problem from happening, a splitter plate may be used to separate the boundary layer from the fast-moving free airflow and divert it away from the engine intake.
Many splitter plates have a series of holes drilled into the surface closer to the engine side of the intake. [1] Suction is applied to these holes, further reducing the boundary layer.[ citation needed ]
A carburetor is a device used by a gasoline internal combustion engine to control and mix air and fuel entering the engine. The primary method of adding fuel to the intake air is through the Venturi tube in the main metering circuit, though various other components are also used to provide extra fuel or air in specific circumstances.
The turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a combination of the preceding generation engine technology of the turbojet, and a reference to the additional fan stage added. It consists of a gas turbine engine which achieves mechanical energy from combustion, and a ducted fan that uses the mechanical energy from the gas turbine to force air rearwards. Thus, whereas all the air taken in by a turbojet passes through the combustion chamber and turbines, in a turbofan some of that air bypasses these components. A turbofan thus can be thought of as a turbojet being used to drive a ducted fan, with both of these contributing to the thrust.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9 was the first turbojet fighter developed by Mikoyan-Gurevich in the years immediately after World War II. It used reverse-engineered German BMW 003 engines. Categorized as a first-generation jet fighter, it suffered from persistent problems with engine flameouts when firing its guns at high altitudes due to gun gas ingestion. A number of different armament configurations were tested, but none solved the problem. Several different engines were evaluated, but none were flown as the prototype of the MiG-15 promised superior performance.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich I-250, aka MiG-13, was a Soviet fighter aircraft developed as part of a crash program in 1944 to develop a high-performance fighter to counter German turbojet-powered aircraft such as the Messerschmitt Me 262. The Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau decided to focus on a design that used something more mature than the jet engine, which was still at an experimental stage in the Soviet Union, and chose a mixed-power solution with the VRDK motorjet powered by the Klimov VK-107 V12 engine. While quite successful when it worked, with a maximum speed of 820 km/h (510 mph) being reached during trials, production problems with the VRDK fatally delayed the program and it was canceled in 1948 as obsolete.
Blown flaps or jet flaps are powered aerodynamic high-lift devices used on the wings of certain aircraft to improve their low-speed flight characteristics. They use air blown through nozzles to shape the airflow over the rear edge of the wing, directing the flow downward to increase the lift coefficient. There are a variety of methods to achieve this airflow, most of which use jet exhaust or high-pressure air bled off of a jet engine's compressor and then redirected to follow the line of trailing-edge flaps.
The Republic XF-103 was an American project to develop a powerful missile-armed interceptor aircraft capable of destroying Soviet bombers while flying at speeds as high as Mach 3. Despite a prolonged development, it never progressed past the mockup stage.
Inlet cones are a component of some supersonic aircraft and missiles. They are primarily used on ramjets, such as the D-21 Tagboard and Lockheed X-7. Some turbojet aircraft including the Su-7, MiG-21, English Electric Lightning, and SR-71 also use an inlet cone.
A ram-air intake is any intake design which uses the dynamic air pressure created by vehicle motion, or ram pressure, to increase the static air pressure inside of the intake manifold on an internal combustion engine, thus allowing a greater massflow through the engine and hence increasing engine power.
An intake is an opening, structure or system through which a fluid is admitted to a space or machine as a consequence of a pressure differential between the outside and the inside. The pressure difference may be generated on the inside by a mechanism, or on the outside by ram pressure or hydrostatic pressure. Flow rate through the intake depends on pressure difference, fluid properties, and intake geometry.
A supersonic aircraft is an aircraft capable of supersonic flight, that is, flying faster than the speed of sound. Supersonic aircraft were developed in the second half of the twentieth century. Supersonic aircraft have been used for research and military purposes, but only two supersonic aircraft, the Tupolev Tu-144 and the Concorde, ever entered service for civil use as airliners. Fighter jets are the most common example of supersonic aircraft.
Boundary layer control refers to methods of controlling the behaviour of fluid flow boundary layers.
In aeronautics, ice protection systems keep atmospheric moisture from accumulating on aircraft surfaces, such as wings, propellers, rotor blades, engine intakes, and environmental control intakes. Ice buildup can change the shape of airfoils and flight control surfaces, degrading control and handling characteristics as well as performance. An anti-icing, de-icing, or ice protection system either prevents formation of ice, or enables the aircraft to shed the ice before it becomes dangerous.
A podded engine is a jet engine that has been built up and integrated in its nacelle. This may be done in a podding facility as part of an aircraft assembly process. The nacelle contains the engine, engine mounts and parts which are required to run the engine in the aircraft, known as the EBU. The nacelle consists of an inlet, an exhaust nozzle and a cowling which opens for access to the engine accessories and external tubing. The exhaust nozzle may include a thrust reverser. The podded engine is a complete powerplant, or propulsion system, and is usually attached below the wing on large aircraft like commercial airliners or to the rear fuselage on smaller aircraft such as business jets.
In supersonic aerodynamics, an unstart refers to a generally violent breakdown of the supersonic airflow. The phenomenon occurs when mass flow rate changes significantly within a duct. Avoiding unstarts is a key objective in the design of the engine air intakes of supersonic aircraft that cruise at speeds in excess of Mach 2.2.
An intake ramp is a rectangular, plate-like device within the air intake of a jet engine, designed to generate a number of shock waves to aid the inlet compression process at supersonic speeds. The ramp sits at an acute angle to deflect the intake air from the longitudinal direction. At supersonic flight speeds, the deflection of the air stream creates a number of oblique shock waves at each change of gradient along at the ramp. Air crossing each shock wave suddenly slows to a lower Mach number, thus increasing pressure.
The Soviet post-PFI projects are several Soviet and Russian Air Force projects initiated to replace the PFI-era aircraft.
An S-duct is a type of jet engine intake duct used in several types of trijet aircraft. In this configuration, the intake is in the upper rear center of the aircraft, above or below the stabilizer, while the exhaust and engine is at the rear of the aircraft. The S-duct is located in the tail, or empennage, of the aircraft. The shape of the S-duct is distinctive and easily recognized, and was used in several aircraft, beginning in 1962 with the Hawker Siddeley Trident. Currently, the Dassault Falcon 8X and Dassault Falcon 900 business jets are the only aircraft in production that use the S-duct design.
This article briefly describes the components and systems found in jet engines.
A diverterless supersonic inlet (DSI) is a type of jet engine air intake used by some modern combat aircraft to control air flow into their engines. It consists of a "bump" and a forward-swept inlet cowl, which work together to divert boundary layer airflow away from the aircraft's engine. This eliminates the need for a splitter plate, while compressing the air to slow it down from supersonic to subsonic speeds. The DSI can be used to replace conventional methods of controlling supersonic and boundary-layer airflow.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich I-7 was a development of the Mikoyan-Gurevich I-3 experimental fighter. Planned as a Mach 2-class aircraft, the I-7 was the second of a series of three experimental fighter aircraft from the Mikoyan-Gurevich design Bureau. Like the Mikoyan-Gurevich I-3, the I-7 was to be one of the components of the automated Uragan-1 then under development by protivovozdushnaya oborona strany, the Soviet defense system.
Having holes drilled into splitter-plates wasn't new. It had been done many times in the past to remove the boundary air that began to manifest itself on the plate itself before entering the engine. For instance, the Eurofighter EF2000 has this feature on its upper splitter plate that is easy to spot. The Super Hornet also uses it on the inside of its intakes. Older aircraft, like the F-4, also used perforations on their splitter plates to remove air clinging to the intake's surface.
... the thickening of the boundary layer that develops at high angles-of-attack along the lower side of the fuselage forebody [in the F-16]. In order to prevent low-energy flow from entering the engine, the intake had to be offset from the fuselage to free it from the boundary layer, which uninterruptedly passes along the fuselage. The intake cowl [of the F-16] features a moderately blunt lower lip that transitions into a sharp leading-edge extension or splitter plate on the upper side (close to the fuselage).