Tin Can "Jet" (Not Self-Sustaining!) This engine was designed and built by a "mad scientist" friend, Alexey. The following is his write-up.
This is a conceptual model of a basic gas turbine engine. It has all the essential parts (electric starter motor, impeller, stator, combustor liner, fuel manifold, turbine stator vanes, and turbine rotor), but produces neither thrust, nor useful torque. It is only able to turn when the starter is on, which is to be expected, as nearly all the parts were literally made from tin cans and some pipe fittings, and without the use of power tools.
The goals for this test were, in increasing order of ambition: 1) to have the starter motor spin the thing fast enough to move any noticeable amount of air through it; 2) when supplied with fuel and lit, to have the fire come out the back and not the front; 3) to have the fire not just burning aft of the turbine, but actually propagate inside the combustion chamber.
We had a number of unsuccessful attempts, due mainly to the lighter getting blown out. This was in large part because of poor design, where the turbine rotor sits mostly outside the engine casing, and blows air all around as it spins. Eventually, we found a good "angle of approach" and got some ignitions.
On the last run, once ignition happened, power to the starter motor was paused briefly to reduce air flow. This allowed the flame to travel up into the combustion chamber, as evidenced by the yellow plume that came up around the fuel line inlet. Thus, all three realistic goals were achieved.
In order for such an engine to become self-sufficient, i.e. run without the starter being on, or even to run as an electric-assisted jet that produces anything remotely resembling thrust, major refinements would be needed, including better component size-matching, much closer tolerances, rotor balance, and so on. This would call for better tools, and possibly better materials, or some dedicated parts, like ball bearings. There are tentative plans to work on those points.HD 2019
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