Planned debris recovery satellite

First Jet Engine. A little blurred depending on what you define as a 'Jet Engine' but quite a few people involved, including:

• Hero 150BC
• Leonardo da Vinci's Smoke Jack, about 1500, very commonly used to drive roasting spits when cooking was done over an open fire
• Stoltz 1872. Modern form, engine not built until 1900, not successful in an aircraft due to inefficiencies and poor materials.
• Armengaud & Lemale built a 25HP unit around 1901, followed by a 400HP design with a Rateau compressor built by Swiss Brown Bovari. Worked inefficiently due to poor compressor performance and low-quality blades
• Holzwarth in 1905 plus Karavodine and Lorin in 1908 started to develop designs resulting in a 350kW engine in 1923 for the Prussian State Railways and a 5000HP unit for a German Steelworks.
• Coanda 1910. Discovered the 'Coanda Effect' which is the tendency of a fluid flow to stick to a surface. It set fire to his aircraft!
• Small turbine driven superchargers were developed in the 1920s and 1930s by several workers notably Buchi and Moss. Turbo-superchargers increase the power of a piston engine by about 50% and allow the engine to work at high altitude. The work is most significant because it led to the development of heat-resistant steels suitable for turbine blades.
• A large Process Gas Turbine was developed by Brown Bovari in 1936 for use in petroleum cracking. It's success led Brown Bovari to later develop the first gas turbine powered generator and the first locomotive powered only by a gas turbine.

Whittle was inspired work by started by Lorin. He deserves full credit for his 1930 patent describing a turbo-jet intended for use in an aircraft. The patent was a considerable advance on earlier work and it was fairly obvious that Whittle's ideas were practical. The patent appears to have kick-started military funded projects in at least Germany (von Ohain) and Italy. In Germany the Heinkel Hirth HeS3 flew in August 1939. The flight was not a success and development of the engine was transferred to BMW and Junkers. In Italy the Caproni-Campini CC2 with a Lorin based engine flew for about 10 minutes in August 1940, again not very successfully. (A year later the aircraft had a top-speed of less than 200mph).

Whittle's first engine ran in 1937 and had compressor, turbine and combustion chamber issues. Whittle designed the compressor and turbine and the combustion chamber was designed by Laidlaw and Drew. Reviewing results, Whittle redesigned the compressor in line with a revised theory that was independently developed by Griffiths at the RAE at the same time. I think it likely they collaborated. The revised engine was much more successful until destroyed by blade failure on the 9th trial. A combustion problem was allowing over-hot gas into the turbine.

An improved version of the engine ran from the end of 1938 to early 1941, during which time it was updated with an improved combustion chamber developed by Shell. In 1941 a lighter version of the test engine was assembled from spare parts, fitted to a Gloster airframe, and used to test-taxi the aircraft. The engine was not airworthy. They found that the aircraft would not move at all with the turbine at 12000 rpm, and only 20mph at 13000rpm. However, the next day the pilot took the turbine up to 16000 rpm and the plane flew a few feet off the ground for about 200 yards. Two weeks later the plane had been fitted with an airworthy engine and achieved 370mph at 25000 feet, faster than any other fighter aircraft in the world at the time. By 1941 many 'big names' were involved in jet engine development: Rolls Royce, Metropolitan-Vickers, RAE, Armstrong-Siddeley, Bristol and the Americans.

The popular view is that Whittle was a lone wolf who developed the Jet Engine engine despite the RAF. I'm very suspicious of this because he received considerable support from the Royal Aircraft Establishment who - at the same time - had other cards in play. In 1937, before the Whittle engine was tested, Hayne Constant of the RAE obtained approval to start development of the Axial Flow Gas-Turbine, today the most common type. He contracted Metropolitan-Vickers to develop the engine having concluded that the Whittle engine was only suitable for short-range fighters. The engine that powered the prototype Meteor was made by Metropolitan-Vickers, not Whittle. But I don't think the Vickers or Gloster projects would have started without Whittle's 1930 Patent. He energised the issue whilst war-clouds gathered. It was also the first time theory and materials like heat resistant steel were sufficiently advanced to make it possible to build a light powerful efficient engine reliable enough to fly. Great men, all of them.

Dave

Edit can't spell!

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 02/12/2017 19:31:11

" cant spell"

Boveri......

Yeah nit picking.....

Edited By John Rudd on 02/12/2017 19:51:57

Nit Nit Picking

can't or cannot

cant is something else, (noun)

Edited By Ian P on 02/12/2017 20:11:04

It is also known that Whittles 1930 patent was circulated throughout Europe, including the technical college where Von Ohain was studying, and later taught and did research. As far as I can tell, whittles was the first patent that went on to be a working engine. In the case of most inventions, there are people all over the world working on the same problems, first to the patent office wins, but as can be seen in the above list, first patent is not always first inventor.

Don't forget the earlier Tesla Disc turbine. I have forgotten the dates, but 1908 rings a bell.

Regards

Richard

The Germans went with the Axial flow type. Britain sent examples of engines to both the USA, and USSR.

The German Heinkel HE 178 flew on 27 August 1939, and attained a speed of 380 mph. The American's first flight was a Bell XP-59 A  Airacomet, with 2 General Electric/ Power Jets W 1 engines, it reached a speed of 413 mph.

Ian S C

Edited By Ian S C on 03/12/2017 14:49:41