How do jets work

Henri Giffard built an airship which was powered by the first aircraft engine, a three-horse power steam engine.

It was very heavy, too heavy to fly. In , Felix de Temple , built a monoplane that flew just a short hop down a hill with the help of a coal fired steam engine. Otto Daimler , in the late 's invented the first gasoline engine. In , American Hiram Maxim tried to power his triple biplane with two coal fired steam engines. It only flew for a few seconds.

The early steam engines were powered by heated coal and were generally much too heavy for flight. American Samuel Langley made a model airplanes that were powered by steam engines. In , he was successful in flying an unmanned airplane with a steam-powered engine, called the Aerodrome. It flew about 1 mile before it ran out of steam. He then tried to build a full sized plane, the Aerodrome A, with a gas powered engine.

In , it crashed immediately after being launched from a house boat. In , the Wright Brothers flew, The Flyer , with a 12 horse power gas powered engine. From , the year of the Wright Brothers first flight, to the late s the gas powered reciprocating internal-combustion engine with a propeller was the sole means used to propel aircraft.

It was Frank Whittle , a British pilot, who designed and patented the first turbo jet engine in The Whittle engine first flew successfully in May, This engine featured a multistage compressor, and a combustion chamber, a single stage turbine and a nozzle.

At the same time that Whittle was working in England, Hans von Ohain was working on a similar design in Germany. The first airplane to successfully use a gas turbine engine was the German Heinkel He , in August, It was the world's first turbojet powered flight. It was the XPA experimental aircraft that first flew in October, The basic idea of the turbojet engine is simple.

Air taken in from an opening in the front of the engine is compressed to 3 to 12 times its original pressure in compressor. The resulting hot air is passed through a turbine, which drives the compressor. If the turbine and compressor are efficient, the pressure at the turbine discharge will be nearly twice the atmospheric pressure, and this excess pressure is sent to the nozzle to produce a high-velocity stream of gas which produces a thrust.

Substantial increases in thrust can be obtained by employing an afterburner. It is a second combustion chamber positioned after the turbine and before the nozzle.

The afterburner increases the temperature of the gas ahead of the nozzle. The result of this increase in temperature is an increase of about 40 percent in thrust at takeoff and a much larger percentage at high speeds once the plane is in the air.

The turbojet engine is a reaction engine. In a reaction engine, expanding gases push hard against the front of the engine. The turbojet sucks in air and compresses or squeezes it. The gases flow through the turbine and make it spin. These gases bounce back and shoot out of the rear of the exhaust, pushing the plane forward. A turboprop engine is a jet engine attached to a propeller.

The turbine at the back is turned by the hot gases, and this turns a shaft that drives the propeller. Some small airliners and transport aircraft are powered by turboprops.

Like the turbojet, the turboprop engine consists of a compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine, the air and gas pressure is used to run the turbine, which then creates power to drive the compressor.

Compared with a turbojet engine, the turboprop has better propulsion efficiency at flight speeds below about miles per hour. Modern turboprop engines are equipped with propellers that have a smaller diameter but a larger number of blades for efficient operation at much higher flight speeds. To accommodate the higher flight speeds, the blades are scimitar-shaped with swept-back leading edges at the blade tips.

Engines featuring such propellers are called propfans. A turbofan engine has a large fan at the front, which sucks in air. Most of the air flows around the outside of the engine, making it quieter and giving more thrust at low speeds.

This makes the gas both high-pressure and high-temperature. This high-pressure, high-temperature flaming flow of gas now goes through a turbine — essentially, another set of blades — that extracts energy from the gas, lowering the pressure and temperature.

Since the shell on the jet engine keeps the air entering the engine moving at nearly the same speed regardless of flight speed, the aircraft can fly faster. These days, jet engines are even more advanced than the basic turbine construction described above.

Now they have huge fans in front, and instead of shooting the gas out of the back directly, it goes through a second turbine which powers the fan up front. While older jet engines took a smaller amount of air and accelerated it a lot, newer jet engines take in more air and accelerate it a little.

The result is that the engine uses much less energy. In the Gas Turbine Laboratory, Defoe and his colleagues are working to make jet engines quieter and even more efficient by exploring design changes such as taking the engines off the wings and putting them next to the fuselage, where the air molecules have been slowed down by friction.

This simply mixes some of the bypass air flowing around the engine with the hot, combusted air, making the engine quieter. Jet engines produce incredible amounts of thrust by drawing in air, compressing it, igniting it, and exhausting it out the back.

And they do it all in a very fuel-efficient manner. Ready to start your airline career? Get started and apply to Republic Airways today. Become a better pilot. Subscribe to the Boldmethod email and get real-world flying tips and information direct to your inbox, every week. Colin is a Boldmethod co-founder, pilot and graphic artist.

He's been a flight instructor at the University of North Dakota, an airline pilot on the CRJ, and has directed development of numerous commercial and military training systems. You can reach him at colin boldmethod.

To: Separate email addresses with commas. Now What? All Videos. Planes Careers. This story was made in partnership with Republic Airways. Check out the full series here. Ready to apply for a pilot slot? Submit your application here. Joao Carlow Medau. Sign Up. Colin Cutler Colin is a Boldmethod co-founder, pilot and graphic artist. Recommended Stories. Would You Go? How DME Works.