Have you ever wished you could peer inside a a jet engine while it was still running? In this video Warped Perception made a see-thru jet engine to experience the feeling.I put together a small Jet Engine with a See Thru transparent housing to allow us to see inside of the jet engine while it’s running, I explain the combustion process of the jet engine from the compressor to the turbine wheel and show visually how the see-thru Jet Engine Works.
source.image: Warped Perception
The first step was balancing, and while he didn’t use an oscilloscope, he could get it within a few thousands of a gram balanced. Then, after some light CAD work, it was all machining. Brackets were fabricated, and gaskets were laser cut to hold the large thick clear cover together. Once finished, the engine is bolted to a workbench, and the transparent case allows us to see the middle of the engine lighting up and flickering.
A blue flame comes out at the back, and we can hear the engine roaring as the speed increases. In the video, Mikka explains the Brayton cycle that underpins the jet engine. In a nutshell, the air enters the engine from one side, gets compressed inside the compressor, then moves to the combustion chamber, where it gets mixed with fuel and ignited. The heat and gases expand out of the back of the engine, pushing the turbine wheel, which powers the compressor to complete the cycle and create thrust.
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I then film it in slow motion with the high-speed camera to get a better look at how the jet engine works but it wasn’t such a big difference. The amount of heat generated inside of the engine only a few millimeters from the outside cover was pretty impressive. At the end I did inject fog into the intake of the jet engine to try and visualize the airflow into the engine and how the engine is ingesting air.
