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Engines · Jet

How aircraft breathe fire.

Six air-breathing engines, from the airliner's turbofan to the hypersonic scramjet — each solved live with the real ideal-cycle thermodynamics, so you can see exactly why each one owns its slice of the flight envelope.

Live

Turbojet

The original jet — all thrust from one hot, fast core stream. Design envelope: Mach 0–3.

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Live

Turbofan

A big fan does most of the work — quiet, efficient, everywhere. Design envelope: Mach 0–1.

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Live

Turboprop

A gas turbine geared to a propeller — bypass ratio taken to the limit. Design envelope: Mach 0.1–0.7.

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Live

Turboshaft

All output as raw shaft power — no thrust, no propeller. Design envelope: Mach 0–0.4.

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Live

Ramjet

No moving parts — ram compression alone, but only once you’re fast. Design envelope: Mach 1–5.

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Live

Scramjet

A ramjet that burns supersonically — the key to hypersonic flight. Design envelope: Mach 4–12.

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Reading

  • Anatomy of a high-bypass turbofan — the annotated cutawayAnatomy · interactive cutaway
  • Jet propulsion theory — the full illustrated courseLearn · course