Gas Turbine (Jet Engine)

Turbine · 1937 · Brayton cycle

Year: 1937
Kind: Turbine
Efficiency: 35–40 % alone; over 60 % in combined cycle with a steam turbine — the most efficient heat engine there is.
Used In: Airliners, fighters, helicopters, ships, and peaking and combined-cycle power plants.
Power Density: The highest of any engine: a jet engine makes tens of megawatts from a tonne of metal.
Cycle: Brayton

Materials

Titanium fans and compressors, single-crystal nickel superalloys with rhenium in the turbine, ceramic thermal-barrier coatings, and blades cooled from inside because the gas is hotter than their melting point.

How It Works

A compressor squeezes air to thirty or fifty times atmospheric, fuel burns in it continuously, and the hot gas spins a turbine that drives the compressor before leaving as thrust — or, in a turbofan, driving a big fan that moves most of the air around the core. In a power station the exhaust boils water for a steam turbine instead.

Inventors

Frank Whittle Hans von Ohain

Equations

Bernoulli's Equation Adiabatic Relation Brayton Cycle Efficiency Thermal Efficiency Newton's Third Law Angular Momentum Reynolds Number Conservation of Momentum

Skills

TIG Welding

Elements

Cobalt Nickel Chromium Rhenium Aluminum Titanium

Referenced by

element

Aluminum Chromium Cobalt Nickel Rhenium Titanium

equation

Adiabatic Relation Angular Momentum Bernoulli's Equation Brayton Cycle Efficiency Conservation of Momentum Newton's Third Law Reynolds Number Thermal Efficiency

researcher

Frank Whittle Hans von Ohain

skill

TIG Welding

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From the Machines database in Notion, last edited 2026-08-18. This page is the row, rendered by the build; nothing on it is written by hand.