How a Gas Turbine Engine Works

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The invention of internal combustion engines in the early 19th century has led to the discovery of utilisation of cheap energy that is petroleum and this enabled the world to develop and progress into the modern world today. Humans were able to accomplish more work done with little manual labour, using internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels. Internal combustion engine are mechanical power devices that convert heat energy to mechanical energy with the combustion process taking place in a system boundary (Rolle, 2005). Among the internal combustion engine invented in the 19th century were the Otto engine, Diesel engine and gas turbine engine. Gas turbine engine is one of the popular engines used today due to its high torque per weight ratio relative to other types of internal combustion engines. As explained by Cengel and Boles (2011), the gas turbine engine works on a 6 stages process, namely air intake, compression, fuel injection, combustion, expansion and exhaust (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1).
Firstly, the gas turbine engine operation begins with the air intake process. As of all internal combustion engine, oxygen is required to support the combustion of the fuel and the source of oxygen is from the fresh air that is taken in. Initially, the fan is rotated by a driving shaft that is powered by the turbine of the engine. A negative or vacuum pressure at the intake side is then created by the rotating fan. Next, the surrounding air is drawn towards the inlet and causes it to flow into the gas turbine engine inlet (Cengel & Boles, 2011). At the same time, the pressure on the other side of the fan is increased as it is compressed at a lower pressure ratio and causes the air in the outlet side of the fan to move fu...

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Works Cited

Cengel, Y. A., & Boles, M. A. (2011). Thermodynamics: An engineering approach (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.¬¬¬¬
Ganesan, V. (1999). Gas turbines. New Delhi, India: Tata McGraw-Hill.
Rolle, K. C. (2005). Thermodynamics and heat power (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Saravanamutto, H. I. H., Rogers, G. F. C., Cohen, H., & Straznicky, P. V. (2009). Gas turbine theory (6th ed.). London, UK: Prentice Hall.
Sirignano, W. A., & Liu, F. (1999). Performance increase for gas-turbine engine through combustion inside the turbine. Journal of Propulsion and Power, 15(1), 111-118.
Walsh, P. P., & Fletcher, P. (2004). Gas turbine performance (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Wilson, D. G., & Korakianitis, T. (1998). The design of high-efficiency turbomachinery and gas turbines (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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