Early British gas turbine development

I was going to nominate him for senior member status a few weeks ago, but then saw how long ago his last activity was, and came to the same conclusion :(
 
Hello.

I'm wondering if someone here might be able to help me? I've been researching the RR Derwent engines for some time now, and struggling with some material specifications... I've had various documents copied from the Archives at Kew, and the various materials used to produce the engines are listed within the schedule of spare parts. Unfortunately, a glossary of terms is missing, and whilst many of the acronyms used are self evident, I'm struggling to identify one in particular. A couple of parts are listed as "N.S". Mainly fixings ("screws"), but also some parts of the actual engine itself.

My first thought was that it might refer to Nimonic, but that is abbreviated elsewhere as Nim.

I'm currently leaning towards Nickel Silver (german silver), as the acronym EPNS refers to "Electroplated Nickel Silver".

I guess my question is: would/could the alloy "Nickel Silver" have been used to manufacture engine parts back in the 40s/50s??

It's generally used for tableware, but I do know that RR have made use of it in their car engines/radiators, I guess on account of it's corrosion resistance.

If I'm way off, I wonder if someone here might have a better suggestion for what N.S is referring to, or be able to stear me in the right direction?

Many thanks in advance!
 
TsrJoe said:
https://elsmar.com/elsmarqualityforum/threads/what-does-ns-stand-for-in-reference-to-threads.26646/
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Thank you for the link. I appreciate you taking the time.

I think in this case, it's definitely an abbreviation of the material though.

It's in the "Material Specification" column of the Schedule of Spare Parts.

Some of the other abbreviations are fairly obvious:

M.S. - Mild Steel
St.Stl. - Stainless
Nim - Nimonic

One of the parts listed as N.S has no threading also.

I had assumed it to be Nimonic until I saw that it had it's own abbreviation.
 
DaveP said:
Hello.

I'm wondering if someone here might be able to help me? I've been researching the RR Derwent engines for some time now, and struggling with some material specifications... I've had various documents copied from the Archives at Kew, and the various materials used to produce the engines are listed within the schedule of spare parts. Unfortunately, a glossary of terms is missing, and whilst many of the acronyms used are self evident, I'm struggling to identify one in particular. A couple of parts are listed as "N.S". Mainly fixings ("screws"), but also some parts of the actual engine itself.

My first thought was that it might refer to Nimonic, but that is abbreviated elsewhere as Nim.

I'm currently leaning towards Nickel Silver (german silver), as the acronym EPNS refers to "Electroplated Nickel Silver".

I guess my question is: would/could the alloy "Nickel Silver" have been used to manufacture engine parts back in the 40s/50s??

It's generally used for tableware, but I do know that RR have made use of it in their car engines/radiators, I guess on account of it's corrosion resistance.

If I'm way off, I wonder if someone here might have a better suggestion for what N.S is referring to, or be able to stear me in the right direction?

Many thanks in advance!
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I asked Tony Buttler.

'NS might be Notch Sensitive.

Best bet is to contact RRHT. The only engine materials book I have covers just turbine materials - tit, Nimonic and steels.'
 
Nik said:
OT: Modern British gas turbine development


Contra-rotating turbine technology has advantages in pre-cooled engines both for advanced launchers and for hypersonic civil transport when an air compressor is driven by a helium or hydrogen turbine (giving a large speed of sound mismatch between the turbine and compressor).[/SIZE]

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/contraturbines.html
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Via the Wayback Machine, here's an archived version of the webpage:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120707235426/http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/contraturbines.html
 
PMN1 said:
Got this form Groggy on the TGP site

http://www.tgplanes.com/Public/snitz/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1268
“The L.R.1 bomber project was first submitted to the Ministry of Aircraft Production late in 1944” and “In May, 1945 a project was prepared for a transatlantic civil transport powered by four L.R. 1 engines driving ducted fans. The machine was designed to cruise at 470 m.p.h. at 45,000ft. with a still air range of 5,280 miles and a payload of 20,000 lb. The estimated all-up weight was 156,000 lb.”

“The static thrust of the straight jet version of the engine was envisaged as 5,500lb static thrust at S.L.” The L.R.1 turbo fan would have given with a bypass ratio of 2.5, so this would give a thrust of ?? 10,000 lb? any ideas?

This is about the only details I can find for the L.R. 1 bomber but I was told by Ian Whittle, Whittles son that the prototype L.R.1 engine was almost finished being built.

Any additions or comments?


Anybody have any further information on the bomber, the civilain transport or the engines and what would have been the effect on the early post war designs if a turbofan had been available in the late 40's
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The name 'LR1' was that of the ducted turbofan engine designed by Frank Whittle. (Work on it started in 1943.) It was anticipated that the engine would power transatlantic flight at moderate speeds and moderate altitudes. No specific aeroplane had been designed to be powered by the engine when, in 1946, the government cancelled the project. They also cancelled Whittle's aft fan version of his W2/700 engine that would have the thrust augmented with a reheat system to adequately power the proposed M52 supesonic aircraft - cancelled at the same time. The turbofan form of turbojet had been thought of by Whittle in about 1933 - patented in 1936 after the formation of Power Jets. It wasn't until the mid 1960s that the British woke up to the advantage of the high-bypass turbofan as introduced in the USA by GE. The British authorities threw away the most significant mutations of the turbojet and sat beck in oblivion until the advantages became obvious from the work done on the other side of the Atlantic. They then scurried about desperately attempting to catch up. The R-R RB211 was the main outcome. Ian Whittle 19 December 2025
 
Ian Whittle said:
The name 'LR1' was that of the ducted turbofan engine designed by Frank Whittle. (Work on it started in 1943.) It was anticipated that the engine would power transatlantic flight at moderate speeds and moderate altitudes. No specific aeroplane had been designed to be powered by the engine when, in 1946, the government cancelled the project. They also cancelled Whittle's aft fan version of his W2/700 engine that would have the thrust augmented with a reheat system to adequately power the proposed M52 supesonic aircraft - cancelled at the same time. The turbofan form of turbojet had been thought of by Whittle in about 1933 - patented in 1936 after the formation of Power Jets. It wasn't until the mid 1960s that the British woke up to the advantage of the high-bypass turbofan as introduced in the USA by GE. The British authorities threw away the most significant mutations of the turbojet and sat beck in oblivion until the advantages became obvious from the work done on the other side of the Atlantic. They then scurried about desperately attempting to catch up. The R-R RB211 was the main outcome. Ian Whittle 19 December 2025
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Hoping you are Sir Frank Whittle's son. Thanks for adding such interesting details to the story of a brilliant genius who still deserves much more recognition, especially for his work under extreme duress.
On our part, we did our best to celebrate, recognize, and defend his work over the years.
The millions of viewers and the endless comments are a small step toward highlighting his excellent life's work.
We heard that Griffith's nephew is not pleased about our point of view and the negative impact that his 1929 decision had on the future of the British aviation industry, but we cannot stop thinking about what would have happened if your father had the full support of the Air Ministry in the late 1920s, or if his work had been secreted at the time.
 
Ian Whittle said:
The British authorities threw away the most significant mutations of the turbojet and sat beck in oblivion until the advantages became obvious from the work done on the other side of the Atlantic. They then scurried about desperately attempting to catch up
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I think this viewpoint massively underestimates the difficulty of getting the early turbojets to work reliably. Adding more spools and/or reheat and/or increasing overall pressure ratio are significant additional complications.

As it was, RR Conway turbofan was first to market anyway, and it took 15-20 years for the UK to get basic reheat working on Avon and Sapphire.

This came from massive support from the long term Government funded research, people, knowledge, infrastructure at National Gas Turbine Establishment, and Givernment funded research directly in Industry and Academia. It's simply not true to say that UK did nothing.

There's more factors to "success" than having an idea
 
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DS: thank you for introducing me to your list, in which I shall rummage, because you present views with which I may disagree, but are on a credible base. So, those involved in M.52 take cancellation as folly, but you set it in Ministers' position of penury. Interviews with folk involved, plus newsreels-of-the-day make History more accessible than dry text. A touch of conspiracy - devious Uncle Sam - is fine in that context. The scope of these 2 Parts is wider than M.52 (e.g: on into Derwent/Nene sale to USSR, so on into Korea) and interesting for that.

There was no conspiracy behind either M.52 canx nor Cripps sale to USSR. Elsewhere on SPF Archibald has a splendid put-down, that Stupidity explains more than Malice does.
 
LowObservable said:
Interesting story about Solar. They built exhaust manifolds in WW2 and their high-temperature fabrication experience led to them being asked to make afterburners. I had never heard of any other company being a "third party" AB supplier - maybe at the time it made no less sense than putting a GE turbo on a PW or Allison engine - but in fact a quick check shows that Marquardt provided the AB design for the Orenda Iroquois.
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Apologies for this necro-posting - the other US after-market afterburner company was Ryan, who was number two in a two company field. Solar actually went into manufacturing with units for the J33 (F-94A/B, XF-92A), J35 (F-89) and J46 (YF2Y, F7U-3) as best I recall. However, once the prime engine manufacturers got over the hump on their second and third generation engines, they quickly turned their attention to bringing this business in-house and Solar was out of this business. Ryan never quite got into it other than R&D. And, yes, that spirally wound afterburner shroud pictured in the attachment is regeneratively cooled.

Both companies had extensive "hot" metals fabrication experience with exhaust manifolds and such.
 

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