Supersonic turbofan engine
AssigneeSarah Qureshi
InventorsSarah Qureshi, Masood Latif Qureshi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A gas turbine engine designed to take-off and land as a conventional turbofan engine at subsonic speeds and accelerate to supersonic speeds during flight by converting into a hybrid turbojet and ramjet engine. This is achieved by introducing an afterburner in the bypass duct of the engine and by retracting the bypass fan backward into a cylinder. This operation is carried out before the aircraft enters the transonic regime, at any stage below Mach 1. At supersonic speed, the shock wave is deflected through a needle cone that is projected out of the nose of the engine in order to prevent the intake air from being choked.
Claims21
A method of operating an engine of an aircraft, said engine comprising a turbofan engine having a bypass duct, an afterburner disposed within the bypass duct to combust bypass air, a core engine having a core shaft, a bypass fan having blades and driven by the core shaft, a shock deflector needle attached to a hub of the engine, and a mechanism of fan retraction configured to retract the bypass fan into a cylindrical configuration, the method comprising:
- during a transition from a subsonic flight speed to a supersonic flight speed, disengaging the bypass fan from the core shaft, using the mechanism of fan retraction to retract the bypass fan into a cylindrical configuration by folding the blades of the bypass fan towards the core engine along pivot axes perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the core engine, and using the afterburner to combust the bypass air in the bypass duct during supersonic flight speed;
- and
- during a transition from supersonic flight speed to subsonic flight speed operating the mechanism of fan retraction in reverse to return the bypass fan to a turbofan configuration to operate the engine in a subsonic flight mode.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.