Turbojet
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Turbojets are the simplest and oldest kind of general purpose jet engines. Two different engineers, Frank Whittle in the United Kingdom and Hans von Ohain in Germany, developed the concept independently during the late 1930s.
On 27 August 1939 the Heinkel He 178 became the world's first aircraft to fly under turbojet power, thus becoming the first practical jet plane. The first turbojet fighter aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the Gloster Meteor entered service towards the end of World War II in 1944.
A turbojet engine is used primarily to propel aircraft. Air is drawn into the rotating compressor via the intake and is compressed to a higher pressure before entering the combustion chamber. Fuel is mixed with the compressed air and ignited by flame in the eddy of a flame holder. This combustion process significantly raises the temperature of the gas. Hot combustion products leaving the combustor expand through the turbine, where power is extracted to drive the compressor. Although this expansion process reduces the turbine exit gas temperature and pressure, both parameters are usually still well above ambient conditions. The gas stream exiting the turbine expands to ambient pressure via the propelling nozzle, producing a high velocity jet in the exhaust plume. If the momentum of the exhaust stream exceeds the momentum of the intake stream, the impulse is positive, thus, there is a net forward thrust upon the airframe.
Modern jet engines are mainly turbofans, where most of the air entering the intake bypasses the combustor.
Although ramjet engines are simpler in design, as they have virtually no moving parts, they are incapable of operating at low flight speeds.
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[edit] Air intake
Preceding the compressor is the air intake (or inlet), which is designed to recover, as efficiently as possible, the ram pressure of the streamtube approaching the intake. Downstream of the intake, air enters the compressor.
[edit] Compressor
The compressor, which rotates at very high speed, adds energy to the airflow, at the same time squeezing it into a smaller space, thereby increasing its pressure and temperature.
In most turbojet-powered aircraft, bleed air is extracted from the compressor section at various stages to perform a variety of jobs including air conditioning/pressurization, engine inlet anti-icing and turbine cooling.
Several types of compressor are used in turbojets and gas turbines in general: axial, centrifugal, axial-centrifugal, double-centrifugal, etc.
Early turbojet compressors had overall pressure ratios as low as 5:1 (as do a lot of simple auxiliary power units and small propulsion turbojets today). Aerodynamic improvements, plus splitting the compression system into two separate units and/or incorporating variable compressor geometry, enabled later turbojets to have overall pressure ratios of 15:1 or more. In comparison, modern civil turbofan engines have overall pressure ratios as high as 44:1 or more.
After leaving the compressor section, the compressed air enters the combustion chamber.
[edit] Combustion chamber
The burning process in the combustor is significantly different from that in a piston engine. In a piston engine the burning gases are confined to a small volume and, as the fuel burns, the pressure increases dramatically. In a turbojet the air and fuel mixture passes, unconfined, through the combustion chamber. As the mixture burns its temperature increases dramatically, the pressure actually decreasing a few percent.
In detail, the fuel-air mixture must be brought almost to a stop so that a stable flame can be maintained; this occurs just after the start of the combustion chamber. The aft part of this flame front is allowed to progress rearward in the engine. This ensures that the rest of the fuel is burned as the flame becomes hotter when it leans out, and because of the shape of the combustion chamber the flow is accelerated rearwards. Some pressure drop is unavoidable, as it is the reason why the expanding gases travel out the rear of the engine rather than out the front. Less than 25% of the air is involved in combustion, in some engines as little as 12%, the rest acting as a reservoir to absorb the heating effects of the fuel burning.
Another difference between piston engines and jet engines is that the peak flame temperature in a piston engine is experienced only momentarily, and for a small portion of the full cycle. The combustor in a jet engine is exposed to the peak flame temperature continuously and operates at a pressure high enough that a stoichiometric fuel-air ratio would melt the can and everything downstream. Instead, jet engines run a very lean mixture, so lean that it would not normally support combustion. A central core of the flow (primary airflow) is mixed with enough fuel to burn readily. The cans are carefully shaped to maintain a layer of fresh unburned air between the metal surfaces and the central core. This unburned air (secondary airflow) mixes into the burned gases to bring the temperature down to something a turbine can tolerate.
[edit] Turbine
Hot gases leaving the combustor are allowed to expand through the turbine. In the first stage the turbine is largely an impulse turbine (similar to a pelton wheel) and rotates because of the impact of the hot gas stream. Later stages are convergent ducts that accelerate the gas rearward and gain energy from that process. Pressure drops, and energy is transferred into the shaft. The turbine's rotational energy is used primarily to drive the compressor. Some shaft power is extracted to drive accessories, like fuel, oil, and hydraulic pumps. Because of its significantly higher entry temperature, the turbine pressure ratio is much lower than that of the compressor. In a turbojet almost two thirds of all the power generated by burning fuel is used by the compressor to compress the air for the engine.
[edit] Nozzle
After the turbine, the gases are allowed to expand through the exhaust nozzle to atmospheric pressure, producing a high velocity jet in the exhaust plume. In a convergent nozzle, the ducting narrows progressively to a throat. The nozzle pressure ratio on a turbojet is usually high enough for the expanding gases to reach Mach 1.0 and choke the throat. Normally, the flow will go supersonic in the exhaust plume outside the engine.
If, however, a convergent-divergent "de Laval" nozzle is fitted, the divergent (increasing flow area) section allows the gases to reach supersonic velocity within the nozzle itself. This is slightly more efficient on thrust than using a convergent nozzle. There is, however, the added weight and complexity, since the con-di nozzle must be fully variable to cope basically with engine throttling.
[edit] Net thrust
Below is an approximate equation for calculating the net thrust of a turbojet:
where:
intake mass flow rate
fully expanded jet velocity (in the exhaust plume)
Whilst the 
term represents the nozzle gross thrust, the 
term represents the ram drag of the intake. Obviously, the jet velocity must exceed that of the flight velocity if there is to be a net forward thrust on the airframe.
[edit] Thrust to power ratio
A simple turbojet engine will produce thrust of approximately: 2.5 pounds force per horsepower (15 mN/W).
[edit] Cycle improvements
Thermodynamics of a Jet Engine is modelled approximately by a Brayton Cycle.
Increasing the overall pressure ratio of the compression system raises the combustor entry temperature. Therefore, at a fixed fuel flow and airflow, there is an increase in turbine inlet temperature. Although the higher temperature rise across the compression system, implies a larger temperature drop over the turbine system, the nozzle temperature is unaffected, because the same amount of heat is being added to the system. There is, however, a rise in nozzle pressure, because overall pressure ratio increases faster than the turbine expansion ratio. Consequently, net thrust increases, whilst specific fuel consumption (fuel flow/net thrust) decreases.
Thus turbojets can be made more fuel efficient by raising overall pressure ratio and turbine inlet temperature in unison. However, better turbine materials and/or improved vane/blade cooling are required to cope with increases in both turbine inlet temperature and compressor delivery temperature. Increasing the latter requires better compressor materials.
[edit] Early designs
Early German engines had serious problems controlling the turbine inlet temperature. While their axial design was more efficient and aerodynamic than the British, the axial turbine fans would disintegrate at full throttle. Their early engines averaged only ten hours of operation before failing—often with chunks of metal flying out the back of the engine when the turbine overheated. British engines tended to fare better due to Whittle's centrifugal design. Some of his original fighters still exist with their original engines.
The Americans had the best materials because of their reliance on turbosupercharging in high altitude bombers of World War II. For a time some US jet engines included the ability to inject water into the engine to cool the compressed flow before combustion, usually during takeoff. The water would tend to prevent complete combustion and as a result the engine ran cooler again, but the planes would takeoff leaving a huge plume of smoke.
Today these problems are much better handled, but temperature still limits turbojet airspeeds in supersonic flight. At the very highest speeds, the compression of the intake air raises the temperatures throughout the engine to the point that the turbine blades would melt, forcing a reduction in fuel flow to lower temperatures, but giving a reduced thrust and thus limiting the top speed. Ramjets and Scramjets don't have turbine blades, therefore they are able to fly faster.
At lower speeds, better materials have increased the critical temperature, and automatic fuel management controls have made it nearly impossible to overheat the engine.
[edit] Sources
Constructing A Turbocharger Turbojet Engine. Edwin H. Springer. Turbojet Technologies 2001.
[edit] See also
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