Airbus and CFM are set to revolutionize the aerospace industry with their groundbreaking open fan engine design on the world’s first Airbus A380.
Airbus and CFM are set to revolutionize the aerospace industry with their groundbreaking open fan engine design on the world’s first Airbus A380.
I hate to state the obvious, but isn’t that just a propeller?
It’s all a variation on the theme of propellers: a high-bypass engine is basically a ducted fan, which is nothing more than a propeller encased in a shroud at the end of the day.
It is, all engines have them (well most, there is experimental propless one), just that in most modern combustion engines they are encased. The revolution comes from the blade design, the counter rotating fans design which needs such precise calculations to work efficiently, that supercomputers are required and then there are new composite materials among other more incremental advancements. All of that will allow them to design blade-out modern engine which will have radical improvement to efficiency.
Even those “fanless Dysons” are just re-routed where the propeller is.