Wait, so what has been inspiring wings up to this?
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
How many blades do you have to add to a turboprop before it's promoted to an open turbofan and touted as a major new innovation?
Based on my image search engineering, the answer to your question is 2.
Based on my one semester of air breathing propulsion that I took 25 years ago, I'm guessing there is more going on inside the turbine part of the engine that both allows sustainable fuels that current turbofans can't and also allows compression ratios at lower fan speeds that allows an open fan with fewer blades. Again, I barely passed air breathing propulsion back then and haven't used ANY of that knowledge since, so I'm mostly talking out of my ass.
I've seen turboprops in museums and on the internet with around six or eight blades. When I looked on the Wikipedia page for propfan engines, which seems to be another name for an open turbofan, the distinction seemed to be mainly how the blades were shaped (like propellor blades or turbine blades) and how tightly-integrated everything is (you can swap the propeller out on a turboprop).
Airbus explained that it ran the numbers and found that, while it could build a successful hydrogen airliner, the plane would be successful in the same way that Concorde was successful. In other words, a technological triumph, but a commercial failure.
Just like any other hydrogen powered... Anything.
I guess this is why so many boeing airplanes have been falling out the sky nowadays. They forgot and accidentally based their aiplanes on land dwelling vetrebrates.
You can pry my aging Bombardier Dash 8 from my COLD DEAD WINGTIPS.