The Gluhareff Pressure Jet (or tip jet) is a type of

jet engine A jet engine is a type of reaction engine, discharging a fast-moving jet (fluid), jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition may include Rocket engine, rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and ...

that, like a valveless pulse jet, has no

moving parts Machines include both fixed and moving parts. The moving parts have controlled and constrained motions. Moving parts are machine components excluding any moving fluids, such as fuel, coolant or hydraulic fluid. Moving parts also do not include ...

. It was invented by Eugene Michael Gluhareff, a Russian-American engineer who envisioned it as a power plant for personal

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...

s and compact aircraft such as microlights.

Mechanism

Having no moving parts, the

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

works by having a coiled pipe in the combustion chamber that superheats the fuel (

propane Propane () is a three-carbon chain alkane with the molecular formula . It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure, but becomes liquid when compressed for transportation and storage. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum ref ...

) before being injected into the air-fuel inlet. In the combustion chamber, the fuel/air mixture ignites and burns, creating thrust as it leaves through the exhaust pipe. Induction and compression of the fuel/air mixture is done both by the pressure of propane as it is injected, along with the sound waves created by

combustion Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion ...

acting on the intake stacks. The engine has three intake stages, which are sized according to the sound created by the combustion process when running. This has exactly the same effect as the

turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced can be used for generating electrical ...

and

compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Many compressors can be staged, that is, the gas is compressed several times in steps o ...

in a

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, and ...

, creating a vacuum that sucks in air. The intakes, along with the exhaust, are sonically tuned so that the locations of the pressure antinodes of the Mach disks in the propane stream match the locations of the intake apertures. Thus atmospheric pressure augments air intake as much as possible. Early prototypes produced very small amounts of thrust, before Gluharev developed it from early experiments on producing thrust from using the pressurized fuel's

kinetic energy In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the form of energy that it possesses due to its motion. In classical mechanics, the kinetic energy of a non-rotating object of mass ''m'' traveling at a speed ''v'' is \fracmv^2.Resnick, Rober ...

to suck in the air and compress it prior to combustion. A 1949 reference to a very similar concept exists. Although described as a ram jet, this version heats the fuel within a closed space to create the pressure for injection and compression of the entrained air in a similar manner to the Gluhareff design and is in all fundamental respects a pressure jet of the same type.

Advantages

*No moving parts, meaning very little wear. *Simple throttling, via a valve in the fuel line. *Clean burning and very low emissions, especially as it is designed to use propane which burns very cleanly. *It is possible that the engine can be built at home from plans or a kit. These are already commercially available kits. *Simple design means that engines can be incorporated into either a

's rotor blades or a fixed-wing aircraft's wings or tailfins.

Disadvantages

*Engines need to be sonically tuned for maximum efficiency. *Noise is very similar to that of a

pulse jet engine In medicine, the pulse refers to the rhythmic pulsations (expansion and contraction) of an artery in response to the cardiac cycle (heartbeat). The pulse may be felt (palpated) in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface ...

, which could cause discomfort for passengers and people on the ground. *Very high engine temperatures are a problem (the engine can glow bright orange which creates an obvious material problem). *Difficult to mount due to

operating temperature An operating temperature is the allowable temperature range of the local ambient environment at which an electrical or mechanical device operates. The device will operate effectively within a specified temperature range which varies based on the de ...

s, intake valve assembly, and fuel supply.

Applications

* Gluhareff EMG-300 * Wheeling PJ1

References

External links