Search

You are here: Home page > Engineering > Jet engine

Home

A-Z index

Get the book

Follow us

Random article

Timeline

Teaching guide

About us

Privacy policy
Advertisement

Jet engines
3

Tweet

by Chris Woodford. Last updated: May 8, 2016.

et engines helped to inspire the rocket engines that put men on the Moon,
and powered boats and automobiles to world speed records, but they're
much more familiar as the engines on airplanes such as Concorde and the
Jumbo Jet. Unlike internal combustion engines in cars and trucks, which
convert an up-and-down movement of pistons into rotary movement in a
crankshaft, jet engines produce power by sucking in air at the front and blasting
out hot exhaust gases at the back. Let's take a closer look at how they work!
Photo: A jet engine taken apart during testing. You can clearly see the giant fan at the front. This spins around to suck air into the engine as the plane flies through the sky. Picture by Ian Schoeneberg courtesy
of US Navy.

What is a jet engine?

A jet engine is a machine for turning fuel into thrust (forward motion). The thrust is produced by action and reactiona piece of physics also known as Newton's third law of
motion. The force (action) of the exhaust gases pushing backward produces an equal and opposite force (reaction) called thrust that powers the vehicle forward. Exactly the same
principle pushes a skateboard forward when you kick backward with your foot. In a jet engine, it's the exhaust gas that provides the "kick". Let's have a look inside the engine...

How a jet engine works

This simplified diagram shows you the process through which a jet engine converts the energy in fuel into kinetic energy that makes a plane soar
through the air:
1. For a jet going slower than the speed of sound, the engine is
moving through the air at about 1000 km/h (600 mph). We
can think of the engine as being stationary and the cold air
moving toward it at this speed.
2. A fan at the front sucks the cold air into the engine and forces
it through the inlet. This slows the air down by about 60
percent and its speed is now about 400 km/h (240 mph).
3. A second fan called a compressor squeezes the air
(increases its pressure) by about eight times, and this
dramatically increases its temperature.
4. Kerosene (liquid fuel) is squirted into the engine from a fuel
tank in the plane's wing.
5. In the combustion chamber, just behind the compressor,
the kerosene mixes with the compressed air and burns fiercely, giving off hot exhaust gases and producing a huge increase in
temperature. The burning mixture reaches a temperature of around 900C (1650F).
6. The exhaust gases rush past a set of turbine blades, spinning them like a windmill. Since the turbine gains energy, the gases must lose the
same amount of energyand they do so by cooling down slightly and losing pressure.
7. The turbine blades are connected to a long axle (represented by the middle gray line) that runs the length of the engine. The compressor
and the fan are also connected to this axle. So, as the turbine blades spin, they also turn the compressor and the fan.
8. The hot exhaust gases exit the engine through a tapering exhaust nozzle. Just as water squeezed through a narrow pipe accelerates
dramatically into a fast jet (think of what happens in a water pistol), the tapering design of the exhaust nozzle helps to accelerate the gases
to a speed of over 2100 km/h (1300 mph). So the hot air leaving the engine at the back is traveling over twice the speed of the cold air
entering it at the frontand that's what powers the plane. Military jets often have an after burner that squirts fuel into the exhaust jet to
produce extra thrust. The backward-moving exhaust gases power the jet forward. Because the plane is much bigger and heavier than the
exhaust gases it produces, the exhaust gases have to zoom backward much faster than the plane's own speed.
In brief, you can see that each main part of the engine does a different thing to the air or fuel mixture passing through:
Compressor: Dramatically increases the pressure of the air (and, to a lesser extent) its temperature.
Combustion chamber: Dramatically increases the temperature of the air-fuel mixture by releasing heat energy from the fuel.
Exhaust nozzle: Dramatically increases the velocity of the exhaust gases, so powering the plane.
Photo: Top artwork: This composite artwork uses part of the top photo on this page, taken by Ian Schoeneberg
and courtesy of US Navy, combined with a photo of a turbine exhibit at Think Tank, the science museum in
Birmingham, England, which we took ourselves.
Photo: Bottom photo: Massive thrust! A Pratt and Whitney F119 jet aircraft engine creates 156,000 newtons
(35,000 pounds) of thrust during this US Air Force test in 2002. Picture by Albert Bosco courtesy of US Air Force.

Whittle's engines
British engineer Sir Frank Whittle (19071996) invented the jet engine in 1930, and here's one of

his designs taken from a patent he filed in 1937. As you can see, it bears a resemblance to the
modern design up above, although it works a little differently (most obviously, there is no fan at
the inlet). Briefly, air shoots in through the inlet (1) and is pressurized and accelerated by a compressor (2). Some is fed to the engine (3), which
drives a second compressor (4), before exiting through the rear nozzle (5). The rear compressor's exhaust drives the compressor at the front (6).

Artwork: Gas turbine engine designed by Frank Whittle in 1937 and formally patented two years later. Drawing taken from US Patent: 2,168,726: Propulsion of aircraft and
gas turbines, courtesy of US Patent and Trademark Office, with colors and numbers added for clarity. The patent document explains how this engine works in a lot more
detail.

Types of jet engines

Jet engines have evolved quite a bit since Whittle's era. Now there are several distinctly different types, each working in a slightly different way.

Turbojet
Whittle's original design was called a turbojet and it's still widely used
in airplanes today. Turbojets are basic, general-purpose jet engines.
The engine we've explained and illustrated up above is an example.
Read more about turbojets from NASA (includes an animated engine
you can play about with).
Photo: Early Turbojet engines on a Boeing B-52A Stratofortress plane, pictured in
1954. The B-52A had eight Pratt and Whitney J-57 turbojets, each of which could
produce about 10,000 pounds of thrust. Picture courtesy of US Air Force.

Turboprop
Turboprop engines have a propeller at the front and are popular in
smaller, more economical aircraft and helicopters. The propeller is
driven by a jet engine mounted directly behind it. Read more about
turboprops from NASA.
Photo: A turboprop engine uses a jet engine to power a propeller. Photo by Eduardo
Zaragoza courtesy of US Navy.

Turbofan
Turbofan engines are much quieter than turbojets and are typically
used in large airliners. A turbofan engine has a large fan that sucks in
air at the front. Some of the air is blown into the compressor the rest is
blown around the outside of the combustion chamber and straight out
of the back. This "bypass" arrangement cools the engine and makes it
much quieter. It also produces much more thrust at both takeoff and
landing. Read more about turbofans from NASA.
Photo: A turbofan engine produces more thrust using an inner fan and an outer
bypass (the smaller ring you can see between the inner fan and the outer case).
Each one of these engines produces 43,000 pounds of thrust (almost 4.5 times
more than the Stratofortress engines up above)! Photo by Lance Cheung courtesy
of US Air Force.

Ramjets and scramjets

Ramjets are simple and compact jet engineslittle more than gasburning pipes, typically used to power rockets and guided missiles.

Scramjets are supersonic ramjets (ones in which air travels through the
engine faster than the speed of sound). Read more about ramjets and
scramjets from NASA.
Photo: A Pegasus ramjet/scramjet engine developed for space planes in 1999.
Photo by courtesy of NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center.

3
Tweet

Find out more

On this website
Airplanes
Engines (general introduction)
Hot-air balloons
Parachutes

On other websites
Rivals for the skies: Learn more about the rival jet-engine designers Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain.

Books
For older readers
The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines by Bill Gunston. PSL, 2006. Former RAF pilot Bill Gunston's numerous airplane books are well worth seeking out.
Jet Engines: Fundamentals of Theory, Design, and Operation by Klaus Hnecke. Zenith, 1997. A very detailed book about the mechanics of how a jet engine works.
Frank Whittle: Invention of the Jet by Andrew Nahum. Icon, 2005. A biography of one of the jet engine's pioneers.

For younger readers

Air and Space Travel by Chris Woodford, Facts on File, 2004. This is my own 96-page introduction to the history of air and space travel the invention of the jet engine was
a crucial bridge between the two. Suitable for young teens.
Super Jumbo Jets: Inside and Out by Holly Cefrey, PowerPlus Books/Rosen, 2002. This book goes into just enough technical detail for younger readers, covering different
types of jet engines, as well as broader details of how big planes stay in the sky. Suitable for ages 912.

Articles
Watch GE Test Its Jet Engines by Putting Them Through Hell by Alexander George. Wired, November 27, 2014. How do you test an engine against water, ice, bird strikes,
and snapping blades?
An Airline Fleet Fueled by Natural Gas by Matthew L. Wald. The New York Times, October 25, 2012. Can we make planes cleaner and greener by running their engines on
natural gas?
Electric Arcs to Quiet Jets by Saswato R Das. IEEE Spectrum. August 1, 2004. How engineers are trying to redesign the airflow through engines to make them quieter.
Biggest Jet Engine by Paul Eisenstein. Three-page article in Popular Science, July 2004. How the drive for faster, more economical, and quieter jet engines is making
them even bigger.
21st-century Hot Jet Engines by Stuart F. Brown. Popular Science, June 1990. How engineers are trying to perfect engines with double the thrust.

Patents
I find it fascinating to explore inventors' ideas in their own words (and diagrams)which is something you can do very easily by browsing patents. Here are a few I've selected that
cover various types of jet engines:
US Patent: 2,168,726: Propulsion of aircraft and gas turbines by Frank Whittle. This isn't Whittle's original jet patent, but an older and more mature version of his ideas.
US Patent: 2,508,288: Gas turbine power plant for aircraft by Francis Marchant, Bristol Aeroplane Co Ltd. A World War II jet engine design.
US Patent: US2,519,130: Compound gas-turbine power plant with parallel flow turbines by Alan Griffith, Rolls Royce. A more complex turbofan from another great pioneer
of jet engine technology.

Sponsored links

If you liked this article...

You might like my new book, Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Surprising Science Hidden in Your Home, published worldwide by Bloomsbury.

Please do NOT copy our articles onto blogs and other websites
Text copyright Chris Woodford 2000, 2016. All rights reserved. Full copyright notice and terms of use.

Follow us

Rate this page

Please rate or give feedback on this page and I will make a donation to WaterAid.

Share this page

Press CTRL + D to bookmark this page for later or tell your friends about it with:

Cite this page

Woodford, Chris. (2000/2016) Jet engines. Retrieved from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/jetengine.html. [Accessed (Insert date here)]

More to explore on our website...

Communications
Gadgets
Home

A-Z index

Computers
Home life

Get the book

Electricity & electronics

Materials

Follow us

Science

Random article

Energy

Engineering

Tools & instruments

Timeline

Environment

Transportation

Teaching guide

About us

Privacy policy

We use cookies to make this site work smoothly. Our partners use them for advertising and social media. By using our site, you agree to this. More info

OK!
Back to top