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Power Units: Out Of The Ordinary...


siznaudin

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I'm intending that this thread be primarily for "older" aircraft engines, but as often happens, some more "modern" stuff might creep in under the veil of "unusual". ;)

 

Here's a start - revealed to me recently as a result of involvement with an old car forum.

 

The Globe-Dayton. The story goes that there are only TWO of these surviving. One in the collection as per the website http://www.memaerobilia.com/engineselection.asp

 

and the other in this recently "created" vehicle in the UK.

 

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And here's the engine... a Ford A (3 litre) based thing.

 

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I can only guess that the cooling in the vehicle application will be somewhat marginal in anything other than a typical Pommie winter.

 

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I think the Jumo series stemmed from the opposed piston engines installed side by side in U boats.

 

There was a turbo charged Jumo, perhaps the one referred to in the Wiki article as the high altitude application.

 

The Commer "knocker" was a way of halving the road tax payable under the Pommie RAC horsepower rating system.

 

A very heavy solution, too!

 

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Couldn't figure out what the above engine was, so I blatantly cheated. Right click/save as came up with Antoinette_4.jpg. Thinking it must be connected with this lot.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoinette_(manufacturer)

 

This one is apparently a result of Indian Motorcycles experimenting with aero engines.

 

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Also read something about Indian Motorcycles producing a barrel or swash plate engine in 1938 named the Alfaro, after it's inventor Heraclio Alfaro. Apparently he was knighted at the age of 18 for inventing Spain's first aeroplane, or something to that effect. Haven't found a photo of the Alfaro barrel engine, though.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

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Found this animation of a swash plate engine such as the Alfaro.

 

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and a photo of the alfaro engine.

 

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Here is a link to the web page where I found these images, and many more including the Russian Sparoset Cam engine.

 

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/axial-ICeng/axial-IC.htm#alf

 

.

 

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1675369903_swashplatemotor3.gif.14f6633ff154627ff9529fe25c1eb6a7.gif

 

 

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I'm intending that this thread be primarily for "older" aircraft engines, but as often happens, some more "modern" stuff might creep in under the veil of "unusual". ;)

Here's one in the "modern" category ( I guess 50 years old is modern), and probably only unusual by todays standards.

 

It's a GE CF-700, one of the early aft fan designs, which were a simple way to develop a turbofan from an existing turbojet.

 

It's based on a J-85 turbojet as the core engine ( used in the F-5, Cessna Dragonfly etc.) A separate single stage low pressure turbine and fan, as one wheel unit, was mounted aft of the existing J-85 two stage turbine. This fan/turbine unit had no mechanical connection to the core engine and was driven aerodynamically by exhausting gases.

 

Original J-85 with 2 stage turbine driving 8 stage compressor.

 

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CF-700 with the addition of the free wheeling aft fan assembly.

 

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It was used in the Dassault Falcon, Sabreliner, and the lunar landing simulators.The idea was eventually dropped in favour of the modern front fan design, due to problems with the large temperature variation between the turbine and fan materials, with the central turbine running much hotter than the outer fan blade tips.

 

A similar aft fan engine design was developed from the J-79 turbojet (F-4 Phantom, Starfighter etc.) and powered the Convair Coronado.

 

Another design unusual for it's use of both radial and axial compressors combined is the two spool Garrett TFE 731, relatively new at 40 years old, powering Lear jets, Cessna Citations, Dassault Falcons etc..

 

At the rear of the engine, a three stage low pressure turbine drives a four stage LP compressor and geared fan at the front. Central to the engine, a single stage high pressure turbine drives a single stage HP centrifugal compressor.

 

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Cheers, Willie.

 

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The CF-700 looks in principle not unlike this Pommie job?And it would have been Besler whose engine was in the Travelair mentioned on the display panel

Nice video; I wonder if the pilot got any steam burns.

The Metrovick engine sure looks like a similar basic principle. It would be good to see a higher resolution diagram of it. Incredible stuff for 1942; the quantum leaps made during the war and immediate post war period are a bit mind boggling. War certainly drives technology.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

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That douglas-self site is a ripper ... I guess I first encountered it about 7 or 8 (?) years ago - there's a wealth of weirdo wacky stuff there - not least in the steam locomotive department. Worth repeating the link to the museum - and while there, why not check out the "powered by boiling petrol" device. Oh la la...!

 

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm

 

 

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Found another rear fan jet while looking for something else.

 

GE CJ805-23.

 

Was installed in a Caravelle - intended for the US market -but never made it commercially in that airframe.

 

Commercial application was Convair 990

 

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Found another rear fan jet while looking for something else.GE CJ805-23.

Was installed in a Caravelle - intended for the US market -but never made it commercially in that airframe.

 

Commercial application was Convair 990

Nice cutaway. The core engine of the CJ805 was the J-79 turbojet, the Phantom/Starfighter engine. They had a lot of grunt in their original form, don't know how they went with the aft fan.

Here's a bit of trivia I wasn't aware of - the F-16 was fitted with a J-79 at one stage, called the F16/79. Bit of a lost cause by the sound of it.

 

I've just copied & pasted this info on it; it's probably accurate.

 

F-16/79

 

In response to President Jimmy Carter's February 1977 directive to curtail arms proliferation by selling only reduced-capability weapons to foreign countries, General Dynamics developed a modified export-oriented version of the F-16A/B designed for use with the outdated General Electric J79 turbojet engine. Northrop competed for this market with its F-20 Tigershark. Accommodating the J79-GE-119 engine required modification of the F-16’s inlet, the addition of steel heat shielding, a transfer gearbox (to connect the engine to the existing F-16 gearbox), and an 18-inch (46 cm) stretch of the aft fuselage. First flight occurred on 29 October 1980. The total program cost to develop the F-16/J79 was $18 million (1980), and the unit flyaway cost was projected to be about $8 million. South Korea, Pakistan and other nations were offered these fighters but rejected them, resulting in numerous exceptions being made to sell standard F-16s; with the later relaxation of the policy under President Carter in 1980 and its cancellation under President Ronald Reagan, no copies of either the F-16/79 or the F-20 were ultimately sold.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

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Found a forum with a reference to the 2 cylinder Anzani being a motorcycle engine. Apparently brevet is French for patent, which explains the number beside it. The engine looks very industrial.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

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Found a forum with a reference to the 2 cylinder Anzani being a motorcycle engine. Apparently brevet is French for patent, which explains the number beside it. The engine looks very industrial.Cheers, Willie.

Well done! Thanks for the research, Willie - and for a New Year's "thankyou" take a look at this website: fascinating stuff.

http://www.hydroretro.net/etudegh/index.php

 

 

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Thanks for the link, Geoff; there's an amazing amount of info there, and a wealth of photos. I'll get back to you in six months when I've got through it all. I should be speaking French by then. Already have 'Brevet' and 'Restaurant' down pat, so it should be clear sailing from here.

 

Happy New Year.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

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Thanks Willie ... I, too, have learnt a bit recently, not least how to extract a JPG from a PDF page/file - particularly when, as an IT savvy friend suggests I am using the Ford T of operating systems (XP...).

 

From the section dealing with Le Rhone motors here is how the valves are worked. Up to now I'd no real idea of how it was done. Next job is to follow up on the motors in some models of the Salmson light car, which also used "push-pull" rods for valve actuation. The French ... incroyable!

 

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.... and by that master Frank Munger - a superb cutaway of the Anzani "fan" type engine - complete with auxilliary exhaust ports.

 

Would you, in your Bleriot, be willing to trust this to get you across La Manche ?

 

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  • 1 month later...

This engine is sort of older (70 years), and while the engine was not unusual, it featured a back-up pull-start mechanism similar to that of a chain saw or lawn mower; it's the Junkers Jumo 004 axial flow turbo-jet from the Messerschmitt Me-262.

 

The turbine was spooled up by a two-stroke Riedel motorcycle engine acting as a pilot motor, similar to that of starting with an APU. The Riedel engine was housed inside the intake diverter body, which had a hole in the centre to accommodate the pull-start cord. I believe the Riedel had it’s own starter motor for regular use, and used the pull-start as an emergency back-up.

 

1.Front view showing the cut-away and ring pull in the diverter centre. 2.With the diverter removed, showing the Riedel engine.

 

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Side view.

 

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The Soviets reverse-engineered the Jumo 004 as the RD-10 which powered the Yak-15, with the same starting system. The BMW 003 was copied as the RD-20, powering the MiG-9. The 003 had the Riedel starting system as well, but I’m not sure if the MiG-9 or Yak-15 had the emergency pull-start.

 

The MiG-9 had twin engines deep in the fuselage, behind and below the cockpit. Photos don't show any obvious opening for the pull-start, so it may have only had the electric start.

 

This Yak-15 shows what looks like a hole in the centre of the diverter, so it may possibly have had the pull-start. Haven't found any references to the RD-10 having it for sure, though.

 

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Cheers, Willie.

 

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