Large and Small Turbofans

This article presents a study on common design challenges of large and small turbofans. Turbofan engines powering large transport aircraft have demonstrated much different design objectives than business-jet turbofans including thrust, range, mission type, development cost, unit price, maintainability standards, and production quantities. Prolific use of ‘thermal barrier coating’ has helped turbine designers compensate for the inability to distribute a large quantity of small diameter film holes over the turbine blade surface. The historical trends in overall pressure ratio observed for both large and small turbofans have parallel slopes. Small turbofans lag behind the larger engines due to the miniaturization required for low flowrates characteristic of the smaller engines. These trends are qualitatively demonstrated, showing the growth in both the overall engine pressure ratio and turbine inlet temperature for several decades. It has been noted in this paper that the importance of high-performance impeller designs and intricate turbine blade cooling concepts for very low compressor exit corrected flows has not yet been fully appreciated.