Aviation & Avionics, Thursday November 20, Period 2

[crazypilotman.livejournal.com]

"Hey y'all," Murdock grinned. "I hope you enjoyed the trip last week and may be even learned a few things. It's good that we got a chance to visit there and today we're going to be discussing jet aircraft and engines."

(ocd up in a min)

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Lecture Part I

[crazypilotman.livejournal.com]

"Starting off in 1947, the Bell X-1 broke the 'sonic barrier' and set the pace for the Research Airplane Program, the cutting edge of aeronautical experimentation since World War II. Operated by NACA (the predecessor of NASA) and funded by the US Air Force and Navy, the program led to safe, casual and low cost mass air travel for all. In addition, the rocket engines that first appeared in the X-1 became the mainstay of hundreds of manned rocket flights on the leading edge of flight for 30 years and the basis of man's venture into space."

"During the 50s, one of the Navy's contributions to the Research Airplane Program was the D-558-2 Skyrocket. It gave us critical experimental information for transonic and supersonic sweptwing commercial and military fleets. A decade later, the USAF's North American X-14 flew to nearly Mach 7 above the atmosphere and paved the way for the conquest of space."

"But progress hesitated for many years at Mach 2, the temperature limit of aluminum. Only recently has the promise of the B-70, the SR-71 and X-15 been pursued, stimulated by the resurgence of interest in the Aerospaceplane. They achieved high speeds through advanced materials. For various reasons, operational aircraft, both civil and military, have been frozen at 50s performance level for over 30 years. Instead of improving performance, sophistication of aircraft systems became important."

"And of course, a lot of those developments led us to the jet engine. A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet of fluid to generate thrust in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets and pump-jets. In general, most jet engines are internal combustion engines but non-combusting forms also exist."

"In common usage, the term 'jet engine' generally refers to a gas turbine driven internal combustion engine, an engine with a rotary compressor powered by a turbine, with the leftover power providing thrust via a propelling nozzle. These types of jet engines are primarily used by jet aircraft for long distance travel. The early jet aircraft used turbojet engines which were relatively inefficient for subsonic flight. Modern subsonic jet aircraft usually use high-bypass turbofan engines which help give high speeds as well as, over long distances, giving better fuel efficiency than many other forms of transport."