compressors There are two main types of compressors used in modern jet engines;axial compres sors , andcentrifugal compressors.

In the axial compressor, the air flows parallel to the axis of rotation. The compressor is composed of se veral rows of airfoil cascades. Some of the rows, called rotors, are connected t o the central shaft and rotate at highspeed. Other rows, called stators, are fix ed and do not rotate. The job of the stators is to increase pressure and keep th e flow from spiraling around the axis by bringing the flow back parallel to the axis. In the figure on the right, we see a picture of the rotors of an axial com pressor. The stators of this compressor are connected to the outer casing, which has been removed and is not shown. At the upper left is a picture of a single r otor stage for a different compressor so that you can see how the individual bla des are shaped and aligned. At the bottom of the figure is a computer generated figure of an entire axial compressor with both rotors and stators. The compresso r is attached to a shaft which is connected tothe power turbine on the right end of the blue shaft. Here is an animatedversion of the axial compressor: How does an axial compressor work? The details are quite complex because the blade geometries and the resulting flo ws are three dimensional, unsteady, and can have important viscous and compressi bility effects. Each blade on a rotor or stator produces a pressure variation mu ch like the airfoil of a spinning propeller.But unlike a propeller blade, the bl ades of an axial compressor are close to one another, which seriously alters the flow around each blade. Compressor blades continuously pass through the wakes o f upstream blades that introduce unsteady flow variations.Compressor designers m ust rely onwind tunnel testing and sophisticated computational models to determi ne the performance of an axial compressor. The performance is characterized by t he pressure ratio across the compressor CPR , the rotational speed of the shaft necessary to produce the pressure increase, and an efficiency factor that indicates how much additional work is required rel ative to an ideal compressor. Thereare additional important compressor topics, l ike stall and surge, that will be added to these pages in the future.