This has really got me confused lately. I’ve read online that it increases efficiency, the potential energy of the air and helps with combustion, but my question is:
If the same amount of air is passing through the engine regardless, why pressurise it? Wouldn’t the gain in PE of the air just be equal to the loss of KE of the aircraft due to the air hitting/dragging the aircraft back as it’s compressed? I’m almost certain I’m wrong here, but any explanation which could clear this up for me would be great thanks.
In: 12
Think about what you are trying to do, move air molecules from the front of the engine to the back. That is the premise, in order to do that, you want to spin a huge fan at the front which pushes air around bypass ducts, you do this in about an 8-1 ratio. For every cubic meter of air that goes through the combustion chamber, 8 goes through the ducts.
The compression stages get a bunch of air molecules close together, when they combust they flow over a turbine that turns the big fan in the front that we need to power to move the plane. The more compression you can get, the less fuel you need to use to get the same amount of power. It is like compressing air using a turbocharger, you do use some more fuel but the power you get from getting more air into it more than makes up for the fuel use. In essence, the more oxygen you can pack into that thing, the more power you get. The more power to the turbine means you can swallow more air to push around the bypass ducts. The more air you push around the bypass ducts, the more powerful the engine.
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