Basic Concepts: Propulsion and Power

Arvind G. Rao and Jos van Buijtenen

Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

1 Introduction
2 History
3 The Gas Turbine Engine
4 Future Challenges
5 New Engine Concepts
6 Closure
References

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1 INTRODUCTION
At some point in our life we all have played with balloons and
we all have experienced the fact that when air from the balloon
is released, the air rushes out and pushes the balloon forward.
This very basic phenomenon is the foundation of propulsion
that is used in aircraft and rockets. Let us look at the same process again with a new perspective, as shown in Figures 14.
The air pressure inside the balloon is more than the ambient pressure; therefore, when the end of the balloon is open,
the ambient air exerts a pressure on the walls of the balloon and the air within the balloon comes out of the opening
with a high velocity. According to the Newtons third law of
motion, the escaping air jet exerts an equal and opposite force
(called as thrust) on the ballooon, which pushes the balloon
foward. A similar thing can also be observed in a propellor toy
shown in Figure 1b. The air is pushed down by the movement
(rotation) of the blades, the air exerts a force on the blades
which causes the propeller to lift. Thus, it can be seen that in

order to create thrust, the momentum of the air needs to be

changed.
In the above example, the balloon has only a finite quantity
of air, which escapes in a few seconds and the balloon soon
comes to a halt. However, if this process has to be sustained
continuously (e.g., as in an aircraft) then the balloon has to
be pumped with compressed air continuously by an external
compressor, as shown in Figure 2a. But since it is not possible for a flying object, like an aircraft, to be connected to an
external compressor with a pipe for long distances, an alternate solution would be to install a compressor driven by an
electric motor inside the balloon itself, as shown in Figure 2b.
However, the balloon should then be connected with an electric power source, just like an electric locomotive connected
with a high-voltage transmission like above the tracks. But
such a solution is also not feasible for an aircraft for practical
reasons.
If the electrical power is not easily available, an attractive
alternative would be to drive the compressor by a turbine
and the power for driving the turbine could be created by
burning fuel inside a combustor (in between the compressor
and the turbine) depicted in Figure 3a. However, the fuel
for combustion has to be carried within the balloon. This is
the principle on which most of the aircraft engines operate.
Alternatively, instead of using the turbine power to drive the
compressor, the power can be used to drive a big fan (also
called as propeller) to push the air and to create the required
thrust.

2 HISTORY
The knowledge that an escaping jet creates a force in the
opposite direction was known even to early civilizations.
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2 Basic Concepts
Force

Air
Air

Air
Force

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. (a) Air coming out of a balloon; (b) a propeller toy.

+E

Compressor

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. (a) Supply of compressed air for propulsion; (b) compressor driven by electric motor.

Turbine
Jet

Thrust
Fuel
Fuel
Thrust
(a)

(b)

Propeller

Figure 3. (a) Principle of a jet engine; (b) principle of a turboprop.

In 150 BCE, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, Hero,

invented a device called Aeolipile (also known as Heros
turbine) which rotated due to steam jets coming out of a
boiling pot of water (Figure 4a). The steam jets ejecting from
the nozzle produced a force in the opposite direction of the
jets which caused the device to rotate. However, this novel
device was used just for amusement and never exploited for
useful work. Many centuries later in 1629, an Italian named
Giovanni Branca actually developed a device which used to
operate machinery (Figure 4b).
Sir George Cayley in the eighteenth century envisioned a
fixed wing aircraft with separate elements for lift generation,

propulsion, flight controls and pilot cabin, more than a century before the first successful flight test by the Wright
brothers in 1903. He also predicted that the powered flight
would be possible if an engine/prime mover would be able
to produce more power in a given time, proportion to its
weight, than the animal system of muscles.
Approximately half a century later steam engines were
invented for being used in aviation. Even though the steam
engines, in accordance with their time, were the state of the
art engines, they were too bulky and were just not powerful
enough to be used in heavier than air aircraft. A few years
later in 1859 a Belgian engineer invented the first internal

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Basic Concepts: Propulsion and Power 3

Figure 4. (a) Heros turbine; (b) a Giovanni de Branca Turbine.

combustion (IC) engine, a single cylinder 2-stroke reciprocating engine that used coal gas as fuel. Although there
were several issues with this engine, it paved the way for
a totally radically different kind of engines that were more
efficient and compact than the steam engines. The IC engine
was further developed by the Germans, namely by Nikolaus
Otto, the inventor of the 4-stroke engine, and Karl Benz, who
designed and built 4-stroke engines to be used for the first
time in automobiles. By the end of the century, reciprocating
IC engines proved their ability and hence became the choice
of propulsion for aircraft.
Generically, IC can refer to all kinds of engines where the
fuel is burnt inside the engines like reciprocating engine, gas
turbines, ramjets, scramjets, and so on, generally reciprocating piston engines are known as IC engines. Unlike a steam
engine where the fuel is burnt outside the engine to create
steam pressure, an IC engine burns the fuel inside the cylinder, forcing the piston to move within the cylinder. The piston
is connected to a crankshaft that converts the reciprocating
motion of the piston to rotational motion. A large flywheel

(dead mass) is attached to the crankshaft to store some of the

energy in the form of inertia for the subsequent strokes of
the piston which are used for pushing the exhaust out of the
engine, for sucking in fresh air/fuel and for compression of
the air before ignition. The valves in the cylinder open and
close appropriately to create boundary conditions for different operations within the stroke as depicted in Figure 5a. A
piston engine therefore has only one power stroke in 2 or
4 strokes (depending on whether it is a 2-stroke or a 4-stroke
engine).
The power-to-weight ratio has always been the most
critical criterion in selecting powerplant for aircraft. Therefore, the Wright brothers naturally used the reciprocating IC
engines to power their Wright Flyer in 1903. The Wright
brothers built their own engine with the help of their mechanic
Charlie Taylor. The 4-stroke engine weighed around 90 kg
and produced around 12 hp of power, shown in Figure 5b
(Spenser, 2008). A sprocket chain drive with a gear system
powered the twin propellers that rotated in opposite directions. The basic gear system allowed them to change the

Figure 5. (a) Working of a 4-stroke engine; (b) The Wright Flyer Engine (www.wright-brothers.org).

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4 Basic Concepts
propeller speed in spite of the engine rotating at a fixed speed.
In absence of any theory on propellers, they designed their
own propeller and were among the first to understand that the
propeller works similar to a wing. In fact, their propeller was
three-dimensional, quite similar to the propellers used even
decades later.
The need for more power, higher power-to-weight ratio
and reliability were the key drivers in the design and development of aircraft engines. It did not take much time for the
military planner and strategists to see the potential of aircraft
being used as a potent weapon in warfare. The World War-I
saw many new developments in aircraft and aircraft engines.
Many of the WW-I fighters were powered by rotary engine.
These engines rotate with propeller and had the advantage
of being air cooled and could dispense with the heavy and
complicated liquid cooling systems required in other types
of engines. However, after the war, the rotary engines were
pushed back by the more powerful and advanced non-rotary
engines (inline, V type, and radial) that revolved at high rpms
and did not have the smoke inhaling problems for the pilot
as in the rotary engines.
After the WW-I, civil aviation emerged. The KLM, Royal
Dutch Airlines, is the oldest airline today which started in
May 1920. In a few years KLM offered scheduled flights to
many places in Europe. The historical first non-stop flight
across the Atlantic in May 1927 by Charles Lindburg in his
Sprit of St. Louis ushered a new era in aviation and radial
engines. It also marked a beginning for civil aviation because
in the years after his Trans Atlantic flight, Charles Lindburg
used his reputation to promote the development of civil aviation. The radial engines continued to be in the forefront of
the propulsion systems. The Pratt & Whitney radial engines
were used to power Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-3, the two
most successful commercial aircraft of the 1930s.
The World War-II again saw remarkable developments in
aircraft and related systems and pushed the developments in
these areas to their limits. Since to achieve higher speeds or
higher thrust levels, the propeller run at a higher speed, soon
they were limited by the formation of shock waves at the
propeller blades that reduced the efficiency drastically. Also,
flying higher was not possible with reciprocating engines
because as the density of air reduced at higher altitudes, the
engine power reduced dramatically. The adjustable pitch system in propeller and superchargers did help a lot in enlarging
the flight envelope. However, by the end of the war, designers started to realize the fundamental limitations of the IC
engine-propeller type of propulsion system. However, in the
mean time (around 1939), a British Engineer, Sir Frank Whittle and a German scientist, Hans von Ohain, independently
developed a totally different kind of propulsion system based
on the Brayton cycle called as the Gas Turbine Engine.

Figure 6. Gas turbine engine (jet engine).

3 THE GAS TURBINE ENGINE

The gas turbine engine is a machine delivering mechanical
power (or thrust in case of a jet engine) using a gaseous
working fluid. It is an internal combustion engine like the
reciprocating Otto- and Diesel piston engines with the major
difference being that the working fluid flows through the gas
turbine continuously and not intermittently. The continuous
flow of the working fluid requires compression, heat input,
and the expansion to take place in separate components and
therefore a gas turbine consists of at least a compressor, a
combustion chamber and a turbine (Figure 6). Even though
a gas turbine engine consists of more components than just
a turbine, it is named after that single component due to the
historical reasons as the gas turbine was developed as an
alternative to the steam turbine. The compressing component
of a steam cycle, the water pump does not consume much
power and thus receives far less attention than the expansion
component (i.e., the turbine).

3.1 History of gas turbines

The history of the gas turbine when compared to steam turbines and the Otto and Diesel engines is relatively young.
The first (usable) steam turbines were already built during
the second half of the nineteenth century by De Laval, Parsons, Curtis and others. The first practically useful gas turbine
engines emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century but
large scale application only started after WWII. The reason
for this late beginning was due to the specific nature of the gas
turbine thermodynamic process. All gas or steam cycle processes, produce useful power only if the power required for
compression is less than the power delivered by expansion. In
contrary to a steam turbine cycle, the power required for the
compression process in the gas turbine cycle is very high. For
the gas turbine to perform, it is necessary that surplus power
is left in the gas after expansion in the turbine. Typically
two-third of the power within the gases coming out of the

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Basic Concepts: Propulsion and Power 5

combustor is used for driving the compressor and therefore
losses in the compression and/or expansion processes have a
significant effect on the overall efficiency.
The first experimental gas turbine engines were not able
to run in a self-sustained manner due to the huge power
required in the compression process. Only in the year 1905, a
Frenchman Rateau, built a gas turbine that actually delivered shaft power with 25 centrifugal compressor stages
delivering a pressure ratio of 3. This pressure ratio would
normally not suffice for a gas turbine to deliver power, but
with an extremely high combustion temperature combined
with water-cooled turbine blades, Rateau managed to generate some useful power. However, the thermal efficiency
of this gas turbine was only 3.5%. Further development
of the gas turbine continued, especially in Switzerland by
Prof. Stodola from the University of Zurich and manufacturer Brown Boveri (currently named ABB). Brown Boveri
pioneered in the development of gas turbines for electrical
power generation and other industrial applications. The first
gas turbine for power generation became operational in 1939
in Neufchateau, Switzerland.
During the same period Sir Frank Whittle in England
and Hans von Ohain in German, independently started the
development of a gas turbine-based jet engine for aircraft
propulsion. Sir Frank Whittle, who was a flying officer in the
Royal Air Force conceived the concept of gas turbine as a
jet engine in 1929 and was the first to claim a patent on the
concept in the year 1930. Sir Frank Whittle set a target to
design an aircraft engine capable of operating at high altitudes and speeds up to 900 km h1 , which were far beyond
the operating limits of the piston engines and propellers. The
British government as well as the British aircraft engine manufacturers did not share Whittles enthusiasm and did not
support him. In 1936, Sir Frank Whittle and some friends
and investors established a company called Power Jets Limited. In spite of many technological problems and lack of
funds, they eventually built the first gas turbine engine for
aircraft applications. In 1937, Hans Von Ohain designed a
similar gas turbine with hydrogen as fuel. After a number
of successful tests, Von Ohain received substantial support
from an aircraft manufacturer (Heinkel), which enabled him
to demonstrate the first jet engine powered flight, the Heinkel
He-178 aircraft in 1939.

3.2 Early gas turbine development

After the WWII, the potential of gas turbine as a powerful new
alternative aircraft propulsion system was well recognized.
The development of high-temperature materials and elaborate cooling techniques enabled the gas turbine to operate at

higher turbine inlet temperatures. Extensive developments in

aerodynamics improved the compressor and turbine efficiencies. New combustor material and designs enabled more fuel
to be burnt in the engine. Better manufacturing techniques
resulted in reliable and efficient engines. Also new engine
configurations (e.g., twin spool, triple spool, turbofan aircraft
engines) further improved performance and efficiency.

3.3 Performance
Aircraft gas turbines are manufactured in a wide thrust range.
From small gas turbines for remotely piloted aircraft with
40100 N of thrust up to about 400 kN (Rolls-Royce Trent,
GE90). Industrial gas turbines range from 30 kW (Capstone)
up to 240 MW (ABB). Several aircraft gas turbine designs
have derivatives for stationary applications on the ground.
These usually are referred to as aeroderived industrial gas
turbines. Examples are the aeroderived versions of the RollsRoyce Avon, Spey, Olympus, RB211 and Trent engines.
The GE LM2500 and LM6000 industrial gas turbines
are aeroderivatives of the CF6-50 and CF6-80 engines,
respectively.

3.4 Design challenges

An aircraft engine is a very high-performance gas turbine
engine. It is a very complicated machine consisting of hundreds of parts operating in a severe environment. In general
the engine development cycle is more than the aircraft development cycle. The Boeing 747 aircraft has four engines and
every single engine produces more power than 100 Ferraris
put together. This high-power output makes gas turbine
engines as a natural choice for high-performance aircraft.
The thermal efficiency (the ability of the engine to convert chemical energy in the fuel to useful work output) of a
gas turbine increases with pressure ratio and the operating
temperature. The turbine operates in a very high temperature and pressure environment. The temperature inside the
combustion chambers of modern gas turbine engine is well
over 2200 K, much higher than the melting temperature of
the material. Even after dilution, the temperature of gases
coming out of the combustor is well over 1600 K. Elaborate
cooling techniques are required in order to keep the material
temperature within safe operating limits. The turbine, which
drives the compressor, extracts huge amount of power from
the combustion gases and is therefore the most highly loaded
component within the engine. Generally the turbine operates
under chocked condition (the velocity of fluid is equal to
the velocity of sound). To keep the turbine blades operating

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6 Basic Concepts
under such severe conditions, very sophisticated material,
manufacturing and cooling techniques are used. Some of the
challenging areas in gas turbines are

r Aerodynamics: since most of the engines operate at a high

overall pressure ratio (OPR), a large number of stages are

required to achieve the compression ratio. Aerodynamicists strive to achieve the given operating pressure with
higher compressor efficiency and with minimum number
of stages. Most of the modern compressor designs rely
heavily on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to arrive
at the final design. The advancements in turbomachinery
has enabled reduction in the number of stages required to
achieve the desired performance.
Materials: aircraft engines rely heavily on material technologies, especially high-temperature alloys, coatings,
composites, and ceramics, for improvement in efficiencies
as well as for reduction in weight. Due to the innovation
in high-temperature materials combine with advanced
cooling techniques, the peak temperature in the gas turbine cycle (turbine entry temperature) has increased from
500 C in the early gas turbines to over 1500 C in modern
high performance aero engines.
Manufacturing: new manufacturing techniques like single crystal turbine blades, composite fan blades, blisks
(bladed disks), and so on, have increased the performance
of the gas turbine engine substantially.
Combustion: a gas turbine engine used on passenger aircraft burns more fuel in 2 s as compared to a car in 1 h.
Therefore, the heat densities encountered in such engines
is enormous. Apart from heat, combustion also produces
noise and emission. New combustion techniques such as
RQL (Rich burn Quick quench Lean burn), TAPS (Twin
Annular Premixed Swirler, used in GENX engines), are
being used in modern engines to reduce NOx, CO, unburnt
hydrocarbons, and so on.
System performance and monitoring: improvements in
sensors and electronics have made it possible to operate the engine in an optimum manner without increasing
the pilot load. Further, the data gathered from various sensors in combination with predictive models can
be used for diagnostics and health monitoring of these
engines.

3.5 Gas turbine manufacturers

GE is the largest manufacturer of aircraft gas turbines,
followed by Rolls Royce (UK, includes Allison), Pratt &
Whitney (USA/Canada), Honeywell (USA, includes Allied
Signal Gas turbines and Garret), Snecma (France, includes

Turbomeca), MTU (Germany), FiatAvio (Italy), Japanese

Aero Engine Corporation (JAEC), and some other small
manufacturers. The costs and also the risks of R&D for
new advanced gas turbines are very high and have forced
many manufacturers to collaborate with other manufacturers.
Sometimes a manufacturer develops a new engine, and other
companies develop one or more modules. Many a times joint
ventures are established with several partners and engines are
designed and produced under the new joint venture name.
Examples of collaborations are:

r CFM (GE and Snecma, CFM-56 engine).

r GE with Snecma, IHI, and FiatAvio (GE90 turbofan
engine for the B777).

r IAE (International Aero Engines, Rolls-Royce, Pratt &

Whitney (USA), JAEC, FiatAvio, and MTU united in
1983 to develop the IAE-V2500 engine).
r Turbo-Union (Rolls-Royce, FiatAvio, and MTU).
r BWM-RR (BMW and Rolls Royce) for regional and business jet BR700 series engines.
The gas turbine industry in former Soviet Union was significant in size, but after its breakup, the gas turbine industry
in Russia is still struggling to become competitive.
In the industrial gas turbines sector, General Electric
USA (GE) is the market leader with market share close to
70%. Other manufacturers share the remaining part of the
market; among them are Alstom (several European countries, includes former Asea Brown Boveri ABB, Alsthom,
European Gas Turbines), Siemens from Germany (includes
KWU and Westinghouse from USA), Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries in Japan and several other small manufacturers.
World wide, about 1000 industrial gas turbines are sold
annually.

4 FUTURE CHALLENGES
As far as the civil aviation is concerned, the main challenges
for aviation can be classified into four categories as shown
in Figure 7a: emissions, noise, efficiency, and reliability. All
of these challenges are directly or indirectly related to the
engines. These challenges are also the main bottlenecks for
the growth of aviation in the future. It is anticipated that
emission standard will become more stringent in the coming
years. Many committees around the world have proposed different regulations for aviation. The Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) predicts a drastic
reduction in aircraft emissions, especially to reduce the NOx
emission by more than 70%. The ACAREs vision for aviation
in the future is shown in Figure 7b.

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Basic Concepts: Propulsion and Power 7

Figure 7. (a) Main challenges faced by commercial aviation; (b) ACARE Vision 2020.

4.1 Emissions
With global warming and ozone depletion becoming one of
the major problems of our times, and because of the everincreasing air traffic, emissions from aircraft can no longer
be ignored. Because aircraft emit their pollutants in the upper
troposphere or lower layers of the stratosphere, the impact of
these pollutants in deteriorating the environment is more as
compared to those by the land-based pollutants. Since the
emission takes place at high altitudes, the global warming
potential of these emissons is much higher as compared to
the land-based emissions. For example, it has been proved
that the CO2 emitted by aircraft takes more than 100 years
before it can enter the earths carbon cycle. Hence, there is
an urgent need to reduce CO2 , NOx, CO, UHC, and other
pollutants emitted from aircraft. The NOx predominates both
in the vicinity of the airport and also during altitude cruise.

4.2 Fuels
The extensive use of fossil fuel has already increased the
CO2 levels in atmosphere to alarming levels; also the scarce
and rapidly depleting conventional petroleum resources have
promoted research for alternative fuels. The different fuels
investigated are: biodiesel, ethanol, dimethyl ether (DME),
hydrogen, syngas and Fisher Tropsch fuels such as gas to
liquid (GTL) and coal to liquid (CTL). Availability and economics play an important role in the search for new fuels.
Biodiesel is a renewable fuel made up fatty acid methyl
esters (FAME) derived from either vegetable/animal oil or
fat from crops such as corn, peanut, sun flower, soybean,
rapeseed, palm, and so on. Biodiesel is not the oil or the
fat produced directly from the crops, but it has to be pro-

cessed in a chemical reaction that is called transesterification

in order to achieve properties that allow it to compete with
fuel from petroleum. In this process glycerine is removed
from the vegetable oil using an alcohol and so producing
an ester (biodiesel). When the alcohol used is methanol the
product is a methyl ester, when ethanol is used the product
is an ethyl ester. Recent studies have shown that fuels produced from biomass are uneconomical as they use much more
energy in their creation than the resulting biodiesel generates.
In future aviation will see a significant use of nonconventional and may be even non-carbon based fuels, like
hydrogen. The anticipated evolution of fuels in aviation
is shown in Figure 8a. The comparison of hydrogen with
kerosene in terms of weight and volume for a given energy
content is shown in Figure 8b. It is clear that the energy density of hydrogen is much higher than kerosene, thus allowing
much less fuel to be taken onboard. However, the volume
required by hydrogen is much higher than kerosene, thus
calling for new storage schemes and techniques. Storing
hydrogen in the liquid form is challenging and hence calls
for innovative storage technologies. However, future aircraft
configurations like the blended wing body (BWB) aircraft are
more suitable for storing cylindrical liquid hydrogen (LH2 )
storage tanks depicted in Figure 9.
Water vapor is the main emission from burning hydrogen. A hydrogen aircraft would release about twice the water
vapor as an equivalent kerosene aircraft. At lower altitudes,
below about 28 000 ft, high levels of water vapor are naturally present in the atmosphere and so water vapor emissions
are not a primary concern. However, for optimal efficiency
commercial transport aircraft typically cruise above 33 000 ft,
where water vapor can form contrails under certain atmospheric conditions. These contrails are known to form cirrus
clouds that can enhance the green house effect.

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8 Basic Concepts

Figure 8. (a) Anticipated trends in aviation fuels; (b) comparision of hydrogen with kerosene for a given energy content.

Figure 9. Possible solution for LH2 storage in blended wing body type aircraft. (a) Front view; (b) top view.

4.3 Noise
Aircraft noise significantly affects millions of people around
the world in a direct or indirect way. It is also estimated that
millions of EU citizens are living with noise levels that cause
serious annoyance during the daytime (Commission of the
European Communities, 1996). Aircraft noise can produce
effects on electroencephalogram sleep patterns and can cause
wakefulness and difficulty in sleeping.

Aircraft noise arises from engines and from the movement

of turbulent air over the physical structures (airframe) of an
aircraft (Figure 10a). The main sources of noise in an engine
are the fan, the exhaust jet, the combustor, compressor, and
turbine. The relative comparison of the various sources of
noise in a modern turbofan engine is shown in Figure 10b.
Since the dawn of the jet age the noise generated by civil
aircraft has decreased by more than 20 dB at a given thrust
level (Grant, 2007). To the listener this is heard as a fourfold

Figure 10. (a) Noise sources in an aircraft; (b) aircraft engine noise sources and their directionality.

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Basic Concepts: Propulsion and Power 9

allows the fan to operate at a slower, optimum speed while letting the booster and the LPT to operate at their higher speeds.
However, the additional weight and complexity of the gear
system can reduce some of the benefits. The GTF concept has
following advantages over a direct drive high BPR engines
(Dewanji, Rao and van Buijtenen, 2010).

r Slow fan speed and hence lower fan noise.

r Improvement in booster efficiency.
r Higher LPT loading and hence reduction in the number
of LPT stages.

r Increased propulsive efficiency and hence reduction in

Figure 11. Aircraft noise reduction over the years.

reduction in noise and it represents a fall of a factor of more

than 100 in terms of the acoustic power generated (RollsRoyce, 2005). The reduction in the engine noise levels over
the years is shown in Figure 11.

specific fuel consumption.

Pratt and Whitney first demonstrated GTF engine for commercial aircraft known as Pure Power PW1000G (shown in
Figure 12a) and is expected to be incorporated in service for
Airbus A340-600 by 2013.

5.2 Open rotor turbofan engine

5 NEW ENGINE CONCEPTS

5.1 Geared turbofan (GTF) engine
Modern turbofan engines are aimed at high bypass ratio
(BPR) with reduced fan tip speeds. This results in a reduction
in the low pressure (LP) shaft speed and subsequent increase
in the number of stages for the LP compressor and LP turbine in order to retain satisfactory efficiencies and pressure
ratios for these components. In addition, reduced speed also
imposes higher torque requirement of the LP shaft which
results in bigger shaft diameters. The GTF engine concept
addresses the present problems by introducing a reduction
gear system to de-couple the fan from rest of the LP Systems
namely booster, shaft, and LPT. As a result, the GTF system

An unducted fan or open rotor engine is a modified turbofan

engine, with the fan placed outside of the engine nacelle on
the same axis as the compressor. Open rotor engines are also
known as ultra-high bypass (UHB) engines or unducted fan
(UDF) engines. The design is intended to offer the speed
and performance of a turbofan with the fuel economy of a
turboprop.
This concept is not new and was investigated by GE and
NASA in the late 1970s. However, this concept has been
revived again by CFM . This open rotor vision of CFM with
two set of counter-rotating blades (as shown in Figure 12b),
is slated to have a bypass ratio of 35:1. To ensure maximum
efficiency in every stage of the flight, each blade will have its
own pitch change mechanism.

Figure 12. (a) The Geared Turbofan Engine by Pratt and Whitney ; (b) the open rotor engine by CFM .

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10 Basic Concepts
ventional liquid fuels. The BWB class of aircraft also presents
unique aircraft-engine integration challenges which demand
the engines to be buried within the nacelle so that the engines
are capable of ingesting the boundary layer. In order to meet
such unique set of demands for future aircraft, researchers are
proposing novel engine configurations as shown in Figure 13
(Tang, Rao and van Buijtenen, 2010) which are capable of
using multiple fuels.

6 CLOSURE
Figure 13. Conceptual layout of a hybrid engine.

However, the main concern with this concept is the high

intensity of noise, especially during take-off. In addition,
installing these large diameter engines on conventional aircraft can be a problem. Also, due to the unshielded blades,
blade containment is a major safety issue.

Aviation has always been at the forefront of technology in the

past and always will be in the future. Most of the major breakthroughs in aviation have come because of the advancements
in the propulsion. With the world becoming a smaller place
than ever before, propulsion technologies will play even a
greater role in shaping the future of aviation.

REFERENCES
5.3 Hybrid engines
In order to make aviation more sustainable, both in terms
of reducing the fuel consumption as well as emitting less
CO2 at higher altitudes, new engine configurations are being
proposed which are quite different than the conventional
high bypass turbofan engines. The current generation turbofan engines have reached a technological plateau and it is
often claimed that complying with future regulations will not
require evolution but, rather, revolution. As described earlier,
future aircraft configurations like the BWB class of aircraft
are suitable for carrying LH2 or liquefied natural gas (LNG)
as their fuel, thus making them potentially carbon neutral to a
large extent. However, for optimum space utilization within
the aircraft, it is also beneficial to carry some amount of con-

Commission of the European Communities (1996) Future Noise

Policy, European Commission Green Paper, (http://ec.europa.
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Dewanji, D., Rao, G.A. and van Buijtenen, J.P. (2010) Conceptual
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study of a hybrid engine with inter turbine burner. ASME Turbo
Expo 2010, June 1418, Glasgow, GT2010-22719.

Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, Online 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article is 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article was published in the Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470686652.eae079