While I was taking Compressible Flow and Propulsion, the type of propulsion that we focused on was that from air-breathing engines. An entire half of the course was dedicated to learning everything about various types of engines, including ramjets, turbojets and turbofan. Do do this, we learned how to analyze the flow through the various components of the engine, from diffuser to nozzle, in order to track how the flow changes through the engine as the engine develops thrust. One of the most interesting aspects of this part of the class was the fact that we had to write code to do all of the analysis in conjunction to learning how to do it by hand. This was very useful in terms of learning how the engines work, qualitatively and quantitatively. Throughout the process of writing the code, I developed a very deep understanding of how various types of engines worked. Also, following the completion of the project I was able to write a very comprehensive script that was able to not only analyze engines, but return stats on how the airflow developed as it passed through the components, and even verify if various components were compatible with each other.
Project Goals: The goal of this project is to apply the concepts taught in class regarding airflow analysis through various types of air-breathing engines in order to find relevant metrics for the engine, such as specific thrust, specific impulse, given certain input parameters. Not only will different engine types need to be analyzed, the script should also be able to match components in order to determine if they are compatible with each other. This was done in tandem to the material being taught in the course at the time.
Learning Goals: Completion of this project utilized various concepts taught in class as well as programming skills acquired in previous projects:
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The Theory
This project had three major aspects to it, which are as follows:
This project had three major aspects to it, which are as follows:
- Analyzing turbojet engines
- Analyzing turbofan engines
- Matching components in turbojet engines