Growth of Jet Propulsion Systems

P M V Subbarao
Professor
Mechanical Engineering Department

Great Success due to Combination of

Wright Brothers Airfoil & Newton's
Innovation with Right Boundary Conditions and
Right Need

Sky is the Limit

 The Limitless Propulsion Method

• Dr. Hans von Ohain and Sir Frank Whittle are both recognized
as being the co-inventors of the jet engine.
• Each worked separately and knew nothing of the other's work.
• Hans von Ohain is considered as the designer of the first
operational turbojet engine.
• Frank Whittle was the first to register a patent for the turbojet
engine in 1930.
• Hans von Ohain was granted a patent for his turbojet engine in
1936.
• However, Hans von Ohain's jet was the first to fly in 1939.
• Frank Whittle's jet first flew in in 1941.
 The Flight He178 by Dr. Hans Von Ohain

• A successful bench test of one of his engines was accomplished in

September 1937.
• A small aircraft was designed and constructed by Ernst Heinkel to
serve as a test bed for the new type of propulsion system - the
Heinkel He178.
• The Heinkel He178 flew for the first time on August 27, 1939.
• The pilot on this historic first flight of a jet-powered airplane was
Flight Captain Erich Warsitz.
 Whittles Jet Engine
• In 1935, Whittle secured financial backing and, with Royal Air
Force approval, Power Jets Ltd was formed.
• They began constructing a test engine in July 1936, but it proved
inconclusive.
• Whittle concluded that a complete rebuild was required, but
lacked the necessary finances.
• Protracted negotiations with the Air Ministry followed and the
project was secured in 1940.
• By April 1941, the engine was ready for tests.
• The first flight was made on 15 May 1941.
• By October the United States had heard of the project and asked
for the details and an engine.
• A Power Jets team and the engine were flown to Washington to
enable General Electric to examine it and begin construction.
 XP-59A

• The Americans worked quickly and their XP-59A Aircomet was

airborne in October 1942, some time before the British Meteor, which
became operational in 1944.
• The jet engine proved to be a winner, particularly in America where the
technology was enthusiastically embraced.
 The Jet Plane Vampire

•The first to exceed a speed of 500 miles per

hour.
•A total of 3,268 Vampires were built in 15
versions, including a twin-seat night fighter,
trainer and a carrier-based aircraft designated
Sea Vampire.
•DH108 was a newer version was built and
released for test.

•Initially DH 108 behaved very nicely.

•As the speed was stepped up in was unsuspectingly drawn closer
to an invisible wall in the sky.
•It was unknown to anyone.
•One evening the pilot hit this wall and the plane was disappered.
 1940-50’s Flying Story
Cruising at High Altitudes ?!?!?!
• Aircrafts were trying to approach high altitudes for a better fuel
economy.
• This led to numerous crashes for unknown reasons.
• These included:
• The Mitsubishi Zero was infamous for a peculiar unknown
problem, and several attempts to fix it only made the problem
worse.
• The rapidly increasing forces on the various surfaces, which led to
the aircraft becoming difficult to control to the point where many
suffered from powered flight into terrain when the pilot was
unable to overcome the force on the control stick.
• In the case of the Super-marine Spitfire, the wings suffered from
low torsional stiffness.
 More Stories

• The P-38 Lightning suffered from a particularly dangerous

interaction of the airflow between the wings and tail surfaces in
the dive that made it difficult to "pull out“.
• Flutter due to the formation of thin high pressure line on curved
surfaces was another major problem, which led most famously to
the breakup of de Havilland Swallow and death of its pilot,
Geoffrey de Havilland, Jr.
 Philosophy of Science

• The goal which physical science has set itself is the

simplest and most economical abstract expression of facts.
• The human mind, with its limited powers, attempts to
mirror in itself the rich life of the world, of which it itself
is only a small part…….
• In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself.
• A Law does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in
that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being
intentionally or from necessity omitted.
 Thus spake : Ernst Mach

• In mentally separating a body from the changeable environment

in which it moves, what we really do is to extricate a group of
sensations on which our thoughts are fastened and which is of
relatively greater stability than the others, from the stream of all
our sensations.
• It is highly an economical reason to think that the fastness of a
flying machine is described in terms of velocity (km/hr) !!!!

Need for A Strong Thought Experiment !!!

 Effect of Disturbance in A Fluid

• As an object moves through a fluid medium it creates pressure waves.

• Pressure waves travel out at the speed of sound which in term depends
on fluid properties and temperature.
• If the object is traveling significantly
slower than sonic velocity, then pressure
waves travel out uniformly similar to waves
on the surface of a pond.
 Moving Disturbance In A Fluid

• As the object approaches the speed of sound, it begins to catch up

with the pressure waves and creates an infinitesimally weak flow
discontinuity just ahead of the aircraft
 Moving Disturbance In A Fluid
• As the vehicle breaks the speed of sound, the infinitesimally weak
Shock waves begin to add up along a “Mach Line” and form a strong
pressure wave with highly compressed air, called a shockwave.
 Mach’s Cone

• As Mach number increases, the strength of the Cone increases and the
Angle of the shockwave becomes increasingly severe

• Mach Angle

1
 
sin M 
 Moving Disturbance of Finite Size In A Fluid

• Mach’s thought experiments are limited to

infinitesimally small object.
• What is minimum size of the object, which will follow
Mach’s cone?
• Later experience proved following:
•As mach number becomes very large for a given size
of the object, the Mach wave becomes a shock wave
and gets bent so severely that it lies right against the
vehicle;
• resulting flow field referred to as a shock layer.
 Mach’s experiments

Mach was actually the first person in history to develop a method for
visualizing the flow passing over an object at very high speeds.
He was also the first to understand the fundamental principles that
govern high speed flow and their impact on aerodynamics.

Ernst Mach's photo of a bullet in supersonic flight

"Photographische Fixierung der durch Projektile in der Luft
eingeleiten Vorgange" that he presented to the Academy of Sciences
in Vienna in 1887.
 Mach Number : A True Measure of High Speed
Systems

Velocity of flow V
Mach Number  M
Sonic Velocity c

For an ideal and calorically perfect gas:

dp
c  RT
d

Vac Vac
Mach number of a flight M ac  
c RT
 Speed of Sound in Solids

• The situation with solids is considerably more

complicated, with different speeds in different directions,
in different kinds of geometries, and differences between
transverse and longitudinal waves.
• Nevertheless, the speed of sound in solids is larger than in
liquids and definitely larger than in gases.
• Sound speed for solid is:

E Elastic property
c 
 Inertial Property