How do airplane engines generate so much power?

Question

How do airplane engines generate so much power?

Answer 1

I'm an aviation engineer for the military and I work in propulsion systems as my specialty.

Here is the deal the from the military point of view first I can't go into to much detail for security reasons. Engineers from the government spend time to research what the engine needs to do for the aircraft that's called a specifications or "spec". The spec's are given to defense contractors which in turn design, built and prototype the engine. The prototype is given to government which in-turn does tests and validates the product, if it's not up to spec then the contracts have to go back and fix the defects.

The short answer to your question they generator so much power, because their designed that way. I know that wasn't the most technical answer, but that's the process to the answer.

Answer 2

The power of love...

Answer 3

Its all about how much energy you can release in a given period of time. More fuel and more air = more horsepower.

1 horsepower is about equal to 42.42 BTU/min

18,800 BTU's in a pound of jet fuel

So if you burned 1 pound of jet fuel in an hour, you would release enough energy to make 1 hp for about 443 minutes, or 443 hp for one minute, or 26,580 HP for one second burning one pound of fuel per second (but this assumes 100% efficiency, realistically, much lower) So you theoretically could burn about 3-4 lbs of fuel per second to generate that kind of horsepower.

You can easily see how a Boeing 747 can burn a gallon of fuel per second (and thats at cruise, nowhere near maximum engine output!)

Answer 4

There's different kinds of airplane engines and they don't all work the same. But the jet engines like in the passenger airplanes pretty much just compress the air to high pressure so when mixed with fuel it makes a big bang and gets the exhaust moving real fast out the back.

Answer 5

They burn a lot of fuel in a short time.

Answer 6

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