How a jet engine makes thrust, what limits it, and how it is built — from the momentum balance to the GE9X
Thrust and efficiency, the compressible flow inside an engine, ideal and real cycles for turbojets, turbofans, ramjets and turboprops, inlets and nozzles, compressors and turbines, combustion and emissions, how the components match on and off design, and how the whole machine is built and held together. Each unit opens with a real engine or flight where the physics mattered, and every lesson ends with Python labs in Cantera, CoolProp, pint, SciPy and pandas. Built on the course decks of Dr. Chong LI (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), rewritten and extended.
From a spinning ball in Alexandria to the windmills of Persia, the engineers of Baghdad, Mardin and Istanbul, and the first jets: two thousand years of turning heat and wind into motion. Read this before Lesson 1-1.
What an engine sells to an aircraft — thrust — and what it costs: efficiency, fuel and range
Builds toward · Aircraft performance · Rocket propulsion
How air behaves near the speed of sound: stagnation properties, nozzles and choking, shocks, friction and heat
Builds toward · Inlets and nozzles · Rocket nozzles · Gas turbines
What thermodynamics allows if every part is perfect: turbojets, turbofans, ramjets, afterburners and propellers
Builds toward · Engine design · Aircraft performance · Rotorcraft
What real components cost, how to design a real engine at its design point, and where modern engines find their gains
Builds toward · Engine design · Gas turbine power plants
How an engine takes air in and throws it out: inlets, shocks, nozzles, reversers, vectoring, noise and infrared
Builds toward · Supersonic aircraft · Rocket nozzles · Aircraft noise and stealth
How spinning blades put work into air and take it back out: compressors, turbines, cooling and materials
Builds toward · Gas turbines · Pumps and fans · Wind turbines
How to burn fuel in a fast, dense gale — completely, stably and cleanly
Builds toward · Gas turbines · Industrial burners · Rocket engines
How components designed apart agree on one operating point — on any day, at any height, and on the way between
Builds toward · Engine performance codes · Engine controls (FADEC) · Flight test
How an engine carries its rotors, its loads and its own failures
Builds toward · Engine structures · Rotordynamics · Certification
What the engines being designed now change, and why
Builds toward · Engine programmes · Aircraft design · Energy and climate policy