100 Years Aircraft Engine
100 Years Aircraft Engine
100 Years Aircraft Engine
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Like all good engineers, those designing aircraft engines are greedy. They always want more power, more
durability, and more efficiency. They also want it in the smallest, lightest package possible. And it should
be easy to manufacture and not cost too much.
Aeronautical engineers have also been fortunate in that airplanes were quickly recognized as essential
war machines. Two world wars, numerous "regional conflicts," and a 50-year Cold War, gave aerospace
development several major boosts.
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In
• Noninterchangeable components. Each was hand fitted. A piston, for example, only fit in the
cylinder it was built for.
• The crankcase, cylinder water jacket, mounting lugs, and part of the intake manifold were cast as a
single piece of aluminum.
• Valves were cold-rolled steel and of the poppet type. Piston suction opened the inlets and exhaust
valves operated on a bicycle chain and sprocket-driven camshaft.
• Fuel dripped into the intake manifold where it was vaporized by the hot water jacket and sucked
through the inlet valve and into the cylinders.
• Time between overhauls was about 12 hr.
The brothers also had to design their own propeller. They initially thought they could use information on
maritime props, but found little useful data. Besides, they needed a prop with 66% efficiency, and ship
props were considered acceptable if they were 50% efficient. So the brothers developed a theory of prop
design in which the prop is thought of as a rotating airfoil. They designed an 8.13-ft propeller that was
later found to be 66% efficient.
Related
The Top 25
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Curators at the San Diego Aerospace Museum have put together an exhibit celebrating historic aircraft
engines. As part of the exhibit, they assembled a list of 25 engines that illustrates the development of
major engine types used in military, commercial, and private aircraft. (Fo r more information, visit
www.aerospacemuseum.org.)
Inline and horizontally opposed piston engines
A rotating radial
The LeRhone C-9, a dependable French rotary radial, was initially rated at 80 hp, and was later
increased to 130 hp. (The Oberursel engine made in Germany was almost an exact reproduction of the
110-hp LeRhone.) The air-cooled engine powered military planes in the first part of World War One. As a
rotary radial, the engine and propeller spun around a crankshaft. By the end of the war, it had been
surpassed in terms of power and put into trainers. It was also licensed for manufacturing in the U.S. by
Union Switch and Signal in Pennsylvania.
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The engine uses a coil ignition system, similar to those used in cars, because American companies could
not build enough high-quality magnetos. And the angle between cylinder banks was 45¡ rather than the
more conventional 60¡. This made the engine narrower, giving it a smaller cross section, and easier to
shoehorn into airframes. The engine weighed 2 lb/hp, making it far more powerful than other mass-
produced engines of the time.
Designers eventually turbocharged the Liberty, giving it 443 hp
and more power and efficiency at higher altitudes.
Turbosuperchargers use hot engine exhaust to power an air
compressor, which sends dense, oxygen-rich intake air to the
engine. It lets engines operate at high altitudes where air is
thinner. At higher altitudes, turbocharging works better than
supercharging, which uses a geared mechanism driven off the
crankshaft to compress air. That's because hot exhaust gases
expand more in thinner air, providing more power to turn the
turbine.
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Lindbergh's choice
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Power: 1,200 hp
Cylinders: 14 in two rows, air cooled
Size: 1,467 lb, 1,830 cu in.
The engine was put in fighters and medium bombers during World War II. It helped set a world record
for high-speed military aircraft, 405 mph in level flight with an XF4U. After the war, designers used the
engines in airliners such as the Martin 404 and the Douglas DC-6. Over 125,000 Double Wasp engines
were built.
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The Bristol Hercules radial engine used sleeve-valves rather than traditional
poppet valves. Poppet valves get in the way of incoming gas, and hot exhaust
valves limit compression and the octane rating of fuel an engine can use.
Sleeve-valves use a ring or sleeve traveling up and down in the cylinder with
the piston. A turning motion of the sleeve as it rises and falls aligns a hole in
the sleeve wall with intake or exhaust ports and proper timing lets in gas and
air, and lets out exhaust gases. The follow-on engine, the 18-cylinder
Centaurus, was Britain's most powerful radial. The Mark VI version
generated 2,500 hp.
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The I-16 powered America's first jet, the Bell XP-59 Airacomet, but GE stopped production in 1945 after
assembling 241 engines for the Army Air Corp.
Prince of turbojets
The Jumo 004, built by the German Junkers company, was the first mass-produced turbojet. Volume
deliveries of the engine began in late 1944, and more than 5,000 were produced before the end of World
War II. They powered the twin-engine Me 262, the first operational jet fighter, and the Arada Ar 232
series of bomber-reconnaissance planes. Some of its unusual features and developments include hollow
turbine blades, auxiliary fuel injection, and an afterburner.
When the Army Air Corp wanted a more powerful jet engine, GE produced the I-40 (J-33). It powered
the P-80 Shooting Star. It used a host of alloys, including Inconel for the combustion system, Stellite for
the turbine nozzles, and Hastelloy B for the turbine bucket. By 1945, however, the recently formed U.S.
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Air Force asked that production be moved to Allison, a division of General Motors. It eventually became
the first jet engine to use water and alcohol injection to boost thrust, and be approved for commercial
use.
The Pratt & Whitney J-57, based on the JT-3, was the
first to crank out more than 10,000 lb of thrust. (The
JT-3 went on to power the Boeing 707 and Douglas
DC-8). The J-57 used a dual rotor, axial flow
compressor for lower fuel consumption over a wide
operating range. The new design also helped eliminate
the sluggish performance common to jet engines when
asked to accelerate quickly. The engine has two
compressors, a low-pressure section and a high-pressure section, each powered by its own turbine
section. This requires concentric drive shafts connected to the low and high-pressure turbine sections.
Production of the J-57 stopped in 1984.
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Pratt & Whitney, for example, just completed ground test at Mach 6.5 on a flight-weight, hydrocarbon-
fueled scramjet. It burns standard JP-7 fuel, which is used to cool the 150-lb engine. Scramjets
(supersonic combustion ramjet), have no moving parts. Combustion takes place as air moves
supersonically through the engine. It's a mechanically simple design, but the aerodynamics needed to
compress and discharge the air are complex. The engine will be used on high-speed, long-range missiles,
though some might make it into less-expensive space launch vehicles and possibly commercial airliners
and transport planes, legislation willing.
Another variation of the ramjet being explored is the pulsejet. It works like a scramjet, except it is limited
to subsonic speeds, and airflow and combustion are intermittent and controlled by a series of valves
ahead of the compression section. The German V-1, or buzz bomb, used a pulsejet that fired 40 times per
second. Theoretically, pulsejets are more fuel-efficient since combustion is not constant, they can be
built in different sizes for different levels of thrust, they are mechanically simple with few moving parts,
and they have high thrust-to-weight ratios. On the downside, current technology limits efficiency, they
are noisy, and vibrate too much. This confines them to small, nonpiloted aircraft.
In the past, hydrogen was the fuel commonly used on ram and scramjets. And it is still being considered
as an aviation fuel. But most engineers believe it will have to be in the form of cryogenic slurry to give it
the power density needed. Another possible fuel being explored is paraffin wax, but it is being looked at
as a rocket fuel, not necessarily for airliners and Piper Cubs.
Make Contact
Image assistance provided by the Aircraft Engine Historical Society Inc., a nonprofit organization that
fosters an appreciation of the people, science, and art of aircraft engine development, manufacture, and
use. The AEHS publishes Torque Meter, the only journal dedicated to aircraft engine history. The AEHS
also operates a web site with articles, images, and reference information on aircraft engines.
(www.enginehistory.org)
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