Airbus Now Using Drones to Deliver Packages to Ships
While most known for its jets, some of which include the A220, A300, A310, A318, A319 and A350, Airbus produces a variety of aerospace products, including drones. The Netherlands-based company…
Jet Engine Design: Afterburning
A very important parameter when designing jet engines is specific power – the amount of power output divided by the mass of the engine. In general, a good heuristic to…
How to Detect and Extinguish a Class B fire
What is a Class B fire? Class B fires are fires which involve flammable or combustible liquids. The presence of these liquids, which are also known as hydrocarbon fuels, represent…
The Scramjet
Scramjet released from B-52 carrier wing (1) The American Air Force has reported that a test of the unmanned hypersonic X-51A “Waverider” scramjet has failed. During the test flight the…
Thrust Reversal
In a typical turbofan jet engine the oncoming airflow is compressed throughout a series of compressor stages, mixed with a fuel (typically kerosene) and combusted, drastically increasing pressure and temperature,…
Turbine Cooling
The efficiency of the gas turbine cycle increases as the turbine entry temperature (TET) is increased. Therefore the hotter the combustion gases that enter the first turbine stage the more…
The Turbine
The turbine is at the heart of any jet engine with its primary task being to drive the compressor. As described previously without the compressor no mechanical work would be done on…
Jet Engine Detail Design: The Compressor
In this post the design of jet engine compressors will be discussed leading to the definition of ballpark performance parameters. For smaller engines centrifugal (CF) compressors are used since they…
Jet Engine Design and Optimisation
For aircraft jet propulsion there are in general four distinct designs: the turbojet, turbofan (or bypass engine), turboprop and turboshaft. This post will address the layout and design of the…
The Birth of the Jet: The Engine that Shrunk the World
In today’s time it is easy to take for granted the complex inventions that alleviate our everyday life. The modern jet propelled airplanes for example, are one of the biggest…
