Achievements and Prospects with Composite Air Breathing Engines

Abstract

WHEN talking about airbreathing engines it is now generally understood that they are either turbine engines when the maximum flight Mach number is subsonic or moderately supersonic, or ramjets when the Mach number is definitely high. When trying to meet the propulsion requirements from take‐off to a high enough speed the joint use of both engine types has to be considered. In such case most people would think of the ramjet as taking over the propulsion task from the turbine engine when reaching a certain value of the flight Mach number, or more precisely of the air stagnation temperature, above which the turbine engine is no longer able to operate. The most elementary view is that of presenting it as a limitation in the engine structure, with improvements calling for the use of better materials. Bringing thermo‐dynamics into the picture shows that increased air stagnation temperature results in a deterioration in the cycle efficiency of the turbine engine proper and this may result in the specific fuel consumption of the turbojet becoming higher than that of the ramjet. Such a performance limitation can be shifted to higher Mach numbers while using increased turbine intake temperatures. The consideration of the aerodynamics of the internal flow brings out another type of limitation due to the difficulty of keeping the operating line of the turbojet over the flight profile far enough from the surge limit though within the range of good compresser efficiency. Variable geometry in the compressor and turbine stators may produce some improvement in this respect.