Aircraft Engines and Gas Turbines

This text on aircraft engines and turbines presents the engine as a complete system, with emphasis on the performance of the engine and its dependence on the major design parameters and physical limitations. The system is described at three levels, first by ideal cycle and analysis, then by more refined cycle analysis, and finally as an assembly of components. At this last level the behavior of each component is described in terms of the fluid mechanical processes, chemistry, and mechanical stresses which limit its performance. The factors which control the engine's noise production and chemical pollutant emission are also addressed. Special emphasis is placed on the past, present and likely future evolution of the aircraft engine in response to the requirements for better performance, lower noise and reduced pollution.

A clear appreciation of all these factors requires basic preparation in fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, chemistry and thermodynamics. Clearly, no single text can review all these: an undergraduate preparation is assumes. The application of these several disciplines to a complex system should help the students to appreciate their interrelationship as well as to understand the engine itself.

With the rapid advances that have occurred since the large-scale introduction of gas turbine power plants into military aircraft in the 1950s and into commercial aircraft in the 1960s, it has become necessary to make a clear understanding of the characteristics of these devices accessible at the undergraduate level. Such understanding is essential both for entrance to professional work in industry and as preparation for graduate study. The book will also prove valuable as a reference for engineers already working in the field.

Although the main focus is on aircraft propulsion, the text will also be useful to those interested in automotive and stationary applications of gas turbines. These applications are treated at the level of cycle analysis, and much of the discussion of components is directly applicable.

The eleven chapters of the text take up basic definitions and concepts, trends in ideal cycle analysis, quantitative cycle analysis, nonrotating components, compressors, turbines, the structure of turbomachinery, component matching and engine performance, aircraft engine noise, hypersonic engines, and propulsion systems analysis. Each chapter includes problems and references.