Turbine Engines facts
While investigating facts about Turbine Engines For Rc Planes and Turbine Engines Securitization Ltd, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The sound Hypnotoad from Futurama makes is a recording of a turbine engine played backwards.
how turbine engines work?
The weird little "spirals" on jet engine turbine tips are so the ground crews can tell if an engine is spinning or not
What are gas turbine engines used for?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what are the types of gas turbine engines. Here are 23 of the best facts about Turbine Engines For Cars and Turbine Engines Explained I managed to collect.
why are turbine engines more efficient at altitude?
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Lockheed Skunkworks is working on SR-72, the successor to the legendary SR-71, with a speed of Mach 6 and powered by a radical new engine which combines the features of a turbine and a scramjet.
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Frank Whittle, the inventor of the turbojet engine, wrote: "Good thing I was too stupid to know this" on a academic report stating gas turbine aircraft engines were "beyond the realm of possibility".
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In the 1960s Chrysler developed a car powered by a gas turbine engine. It could rev to 44,500 rpm, sounded like a vacuum cleaner and could run on diesel, petrol, kerosine, jet fuel and as the President of Mexico proved, tequila.
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After a mine hit which flooded the engine room, knocked both turbine engines from their mounts, and snapped the keel the crew of USS Samuel B. Roberts fought fire and flood for five hours, lashed the vessel together using steel cables and used auxiliary thrusters to escape the mine field.
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The Bahrain World Trade Center is the 1st skyscraper in the world to integrate wind turbines into its design. Each turbine is 29m in diameter and their capacity is 675kw of wind power. That's enough to provide lighting for about 300 homes, 258 hospitals, 17 industrial plants, and 33 car engines.
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The Fiat Turbina was a 1954 concept car, with a gas turbine engine, that had a declared power of 300 hp @ 22,000 rpm and a top speed of 160 mph.
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The Rocketdyne F-1 engine was the largest single nossle rocket engine ever used. It had 1.5 million pounds of thrust and needed a 55000 hp turbine engine just to drive its fuel pumps. The Saturn V rocket used 5 of them to get men on the moon.
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An M1 Abrams Tank runs on a 1500hp Gas Turbine Engine, not a diesel as commonly assumed, that runs at 3000 rpm after a 10:1 reduction gear set.
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Chrysler developed a turbine engine for road vehicles which could operated on many fuels including jet fuel and tequilla
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An AA 767 engine exploded on takeoff because a 'turbine disk' failed that had never failed before in any engine. A piece of the >100lb disk went through the right wing, and crashed through the roof of a UPS warehouse over 1,000 yards away. The disk had flown for 18 years and over 11,000 flights.
Why don't cars use turbine engines?
You can easily fact check why are turbine engines so expensive by examining the linked well-known sources.
GM Developed a Turbine Engine Which Ran on Coal Powder; Prototypes Were Released in the Early 80's
Jet aircraft use a small jet engine (normally located in the tail cone) to generate enough compressed air to accelerate the fans of the main turbine engine to a high enough rpm to start. - source
Gustaf de Laval created the first centrifugal milk-cream separator as well a nozzle used in steam turbines and modern rocket engines.
Some turbine powered aircraft carry water in tanks to be injected into the engine for added thrust and cooling during takeoff - source
The terrible sound when working on turbine engines?
In the 1960's a company called Turbonique sold high powered rocket and turbine engines by mail order for use in drag racing. The National Hot Rod Association banned their engines after multiple reported incidents and fatalities.
How turbine engines start?
The largest turbine engine is the GE90 and produces 115,000lbf (510kN) of thrust, more than the combined engines of a 747
In 1964 The Army Wanted Flying Troops So Williams International Designed the First Small Turbine Engine
When a screw is dropped into a turbine engine, it makes a beautiful xylophone sound
Nikola Tesla produced bladeless steam turbine engines more than a century ago, and the smallest engine was over 100hp despite being roughly the size of a modern box fan.
