Friday 28 August 2020

Thrust from a jet engine

 

This engine is on display at Watchtree, the result of a terrible crash some years ago. The data says a maximum thrust of 40kN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panavia_Tornado says that the maximum mass of the loaded plane is about 20,000 kg. By  the Newton's 2nd Law equation F=ma, this gives a maximum acceleration of 2m/s/s. That doesn't sound very much and also ignores any counter forces like friction and drag. Following the references to source gets some very different data http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/bomber/tornado_ids/ It turns out that the plane had 2 engines and that the maximum thrust was 149.5kN. It doesn't say if that is total or for one engine, but let's take it as total. With no friction or drag, acceleration would be about 7.5m/s/s which is getting close to g.