Engine Design Trends—II: A Paper Delivered at the Eighth Aircraft Production Conference Organized By the Institution of Production Engineers and Held at the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, on April 5–7, 1962

THE paper by Mr Morley has illustrated in excellent fashion how the continued requirements for better fuel consumption, more thrust or power per unit of engine weight, more thrust or power per unit of frontal area, has caused the relatively simple Whittle jet propulsion engine to develop into the highly complex aircraft gas turbine of today. Of all the means of transporting people and goods about the surface of the earth, the aeroplane responds more rapidly to technical advances in the method of propulsion than any other piece of equipment (excepting, perhaps, rockets), and this applies not only to speed, range and altitude of operation, but also to the most important problem of operating costs. As a consequence of this, we engine designers are constantly being faced with the necessity of creating new ‘technical triumphs’ in any new engine that we design, and this is the driving force which causes us to complicate the design and, hence, the manufacture of many of the components.