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Concept
Turbofan
Summary
The turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a portmanteau of "turbine" and "fan": the turbo portion refers to a gas turbine engine which achieves mechanical energy from combustion, and the fan, a ducted fan that uses the mechanical energy from the gas turbine to force air rearwards. Thus, whereas all the air taken in by a turbojet passes through the combustion chamber and turbines, in a turbofan some of that air bypasses these components. A turbofan thus can be thought of as a turbojet being used to drive a ducted fan, with both of these contributing to the thrust.
The ratio of the mass-flow of air bypassing the engine core to the mass-flow of air passing through the core is referred to as the bypass ratio. The engine produces thrust through a combination of these two portions working together; engines that use more jet thrust relative to fan thrust are known as low-bypass turbofans, conversely those that have considerably more fan thrust than jet thrust are known as high-bypass. Most commercial aviation jet engines in use today are of the high-bypass type, and most modern military fighter engines are low-bypass. Afterburners are used on low-bypass turbofan engines with bypass and core mixing before the afterburner.
Modern turbofans have either a large single-stage fan or a smaller fan with several stages. An early configuration combined a low-pressure turbine and fan in a single rear-mounted unit.
The turbofan was invented to improve the fuel consumption of the turbojet. It achieves this by pushing more air, thus increasing the mass and lowering the speed of the propelling jet compared to that of the turbojet. This is done mechanically by adding a ducted fan rather than using viscous forces by adding an ejector, as first envisaged by Whittle.
Frank Whittle envisioned flight speeds of 500 mph in his March 1936 UK patent 471,368 "Improvements relating to the propulsion of aircraft", in which he describes the principles behind the turbofan, although not called as such at that time.
Official source
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