Turboprop

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A schematic diagram showing the operation of a turboprop engine.

The P&W PT6, one of the most popular turboprop engines.

A Turboprop engine is a type of gas turbine engine used in aircraft. Most of a turboprop engine's power is used to drive a propeller, and the propellers used are very similar to the propellers used in piston or reciprocating engine-driven aircraft (with the exception that turboprops usually use a constant velocity propeller).

A turboprop engine is similar to a turbojet, but has additional fan blades in the turbine stage to recover more power from the engine to turn the propeller. Turboprop engines are generally used on small or slow subsonic aircraft, but some aircraft outfitted with turboprops have cruising speeds in excess of 500 kts (926 km/h, 575 mph).

In its simplest form, a turboprop consists of an intake, compressor, combustor, turbine and a propelling nozzle. Air is drawn into the intake and compressed by the compressor. Fuel is then added to the compressed air in the combustor. The hot combustion gases expand through the turbine. Part of the power generated by the turbine is used to drive the compressor. The rest goes through the reduction gearing to the propeller. Further expansion of the gases occurs in the propelling nozzle, where the gases exhaust to atmospheric pressure. The propelling nozzle provides a relatively small proportion of the thrust generated by a turboprop, the remainder comes from the conversion of shaft power to thrust in the propeller.

Turboprops are very efficient at modest flight speeds (below 450 mph), because the jet velocity of the propeller (and exhaust) is relatively low. Due to the high price of turboprop engines, they are mostly used where high performance Short-Takeoff and Landing (STOL) capability and efficiency at modest flight speeds is required. In a civilian aviation context, the most common application of turboprop engines are small commuter aircraft.

1 Technological aspects
2 History
3 Current developments
4 See also

[edit] Technological aspects

In a turboprop much of the jet thrust is sacrificed in favor of shaftpower, which is obtained by extracting additional power (to that necessary to drive the compressor) from the turbine expansion process. While the power turbine may be integral with the gas generator section, many turboprops today feature a Free Power Turbine, on a separate coaxial shaft. This enables the propeller to rotate freely, independent of compressor speed. Owing to the additional expansion in the turbine system, the residual energy in the exhaust jet is fairly low. Consequently, the exhaust jet produces (typically) less than 10% of the total thrust, including that from the propeller.

Because the propeller is much larger in diameter than the power turbine, the tip speed of the propeller can become supersonic. To prevent this, a speed reduction gearbox is inserted between the power turbine and propeller shafts. The gearbox is part of the engine, whereas in a turboshaft the (helicopter) rotor reduction gearbox is remote from the engine.

Residual thrust on a turboshaft is avoided by further expansion in the turbine system and/or truncating and turning the exhaust through 90 degrees, to produce two opposing jets. Apart from the above, there is very little difference between a turboprop and a turboshaft.

While most modern turbojet and turbofan engines use axial-flow compressors, turboprop engines, because of their small size, usually contain at least one stage of centrifugal compression. NOTE: it is difficult to manufacture robust blading for the rear stages of small axial-flow compressors.

Propellers lose efficiency as aircraft speed increases, so turboprops are normally not used on high-speed aircraft. However, Propfan engines, which are very similar to turboprop engines, can cruise at flight speeds approaching Mach 0.75.

[edit] History

A Rolls-Royce RB.50 Trent on a test rig at Hucknall, in March 1945

The world's first Turboprop was the 'Jendrassik Cs-1' designed by the Hungarian mechanical engineer György Jendrassik. It was produced and tested in the Ganz Factory in Budapest between 1939 and 1942. It was planned to fit to the Varga RMI-1 X/H twin-engined reconnaissance bomber designed by László Varga in 1940, but the programme was cancelled. Jendrassik had also designed a small-scale 75 kW turboprop in 1937.

The first British turboprop engine was the Rolls-Royce RB.50 Trent, a converted Derwent II fitted with reduction gear and a Rotol 7 ft 11 inch five-bladed propeller. Two Trents were fitted to Gloster Meteor EE227 — the sole "Trent-Meteor" — which became the first relatively reliable turboprop powered aircraft. From their experience with the Trent, Rolls-Royce developed the Dart, which became one of the most reliable turboprop engines ever built. Dart production continued for more than fifty years.

While the Soviet Union had the technology to create a jet powered strategic bomber comparable to Boeing's B-52 Stratofortress, they instead produced the Tu-95 'Bear', which uses 8 contra-rotating propellers (two per nacelle) with supersonic tip speeds to achieve maximum cruise speeds in excess of 575 mph, faster than many of the first jet aircraft, and comparable to jet cruising speeds for most missions. The Bear would serve as their most successful long range combat and surveillance aircraft and symbol of Soviet power projection throughout the end of the 20th century. The USA would incorporate contra-rotating turboprop engines in two experimental tail-sitting VTOL and fighter aircraft, the Convair XFY Pogo and the Lockheed XFV Salmon, during the 1950s, but none would be adopted into service.

The first American turboprop was the General-Electric T-31. America skipped over turboprop airliners in favor of the Boeing 707, but the technology of the Lockheed Electra would be used in both the long-lived P-3C Orion as well as the classic C-130 Hercules, one of the most successful military aircraft in terms of length of production ever produced. One of the most popular turboprop engines is the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 engine.

[edit] Current developments

A European consortium is currently developing the 11,000 shp TP400-D6 turboprop for the Airbus A400M military transport. The engine is all-axial and has a two shaft core, with a free power turbine mounted on a third coaxial shaft.