Prop and Jet Engines
What is the difference between the two?
Jets cost more money for the buyer and customer to use, but the pros for the use of the plane outweigh the cons of this powerful plane. Jets capabilities go far beyond the capabilities of prop planes such as the power the engine produces, the speeds they are able to maintain and the altitudes they are capable of flying at.
Turbofan Engines
Jet Planes
These type of engines keep the airliners running. Their effeciency is through the roof great for airliners because they are capable to fly a long ride and turn right back around and fly the long ride again. On the flip side, these jet engines burn an enormous amount of fuel no matter the amount of time they are flying. Because of this con, it is why huge jet liners with these engines fly the medium to long range flights. The turboprop engines fly the shorter ranged flights.
The success of this engine on aircraft lies within the performance it produces. This engine is able to fly at Moch .8-.85 which is equivalent to 608.96-647.02 miles per hour, and gets up to altitudes between 32,000 and 35,00 feet. These capabilities allow the engine to burn more effeciently due to the atmospheric pressure lessening as the aircarft moves up in altitude. These engines are much more powerful creating much more thrust for the aircraft to move quicker, so this allows the civilian aircraft to carry more people and cargo through a flight. Not only are these engines used for airliners, but they are used for military jets as well. These engines originated from from the military due to technology enhancements in our military first. The only difference between the two airplanes is an occassional open door out the back and the jet engines having the wings on top of the body of the aircraft. These two differences come in the military aircraft not the airliners.
My main experience with jet engines occurred this past week at my mentorship. The company that I mentor with, Lanier Flight Center, owns their own charter plane. This plane flies clients wherever their destinations may be across the nation.
The plane is a 1985 Conquest. This plane consist of two turboprop engines on either side of the aircraft propelling the aircraft forward. A turboprop engine consists of a mix of a prop engine and a jet engine combined into one. On the front-end is the jet engine and on the back-end is the prop engine. An employer from Pratt and Whitney was in our hangar to perform a check-up on the Jet part of the engine. Every 400 hours the engine is ran through an in depth screening.
The employee from Pratt and Whitney had a machine made by Olympus that was capable to feed a camera cable down into the engine with different light settings and abilities to move around once inside the engine. First, he had to fit an odd shaped tube down into the engine past a couple parts of the engine in order to be able to feed the camera cable into the correct area. Once the tube was in place, he fed the camera down the tube, and the camera was looking at the Stater, a part of the engine. The job of this camera was to move slowly around in the engine to see if there was any damage caused. This process took about two hours because he had to go through many grooves and holes in order to get to certain areas in the engine. He also took pictures with the machine he was using if he found anything unusual inside the engine. I was able to learn many things about this Jet engine though opening my ears and listening to the knowledge this employee knew. This internship has really inspired me to turn a wrench someday on airplanes.
My experiences with Jet Engines
