Turbojet and Turbofan Engine Performance Increases Through Turbine Burners

In a conventional turbojet and turbofan engine, fuel is burned in the main combustor before the heated high-pressure gas expands through the turbine. A turbine-burner concept was proposed in a previous paper in which combustion is continued inside the turbine to increase the ef ciency and speci c thrust of the turbojet engine. This concept is extended to include not only continuous burning in the turbine but also “discrete ” interstage turbine burners as an intermediate option. A thermodynamic cycle analysis is performed to compare the relative performances of the conventional engine and the turbine-burner engine with different combustion options for both turbojet and turbofan con gurations. Turbine-burner engines are shown to provide signi cantly higher speci c thrust with no or only small increases in thrust speci c fuel consumption compared to conventional engines. Turbine-burner engines also widen the operational range of ight Mach number and compressor pressure ratio. The performance gain of turbine-burner engines over conventional engines increases with compressor pressure ratio, fan bypass ratio, and ight Mach number. I