Engine

An engine is a machine that changes heat into motion. Powered aircraft are propelled through the air by at least one engine. Several different types of engines are used in aircraft. An engine used for flight needs to be relatively lightweight, small, powerful, and reliable.

The First Aircraft Engines

The first engines used in the earliest attempts to build powered aircraft were steam engines. They were powerful engines, but they were also very heavy. They did sometimes manage to lift an aircraft off the ground for a few seconds, but it soon became clear that a different sort of engine was needed.

When the Wright brothers looked for an engine to power the world’s first air­plane, they were unable to find anything suitable, so they decided to build their own engine. It was a small gasoline-

О Four basic types of turbine engines are used today: the turbojet, the turboprop, the turbofan, and the turboshaft.

more powerful engines. These large, powerful piston engines produced a lot of vibration. One way of smoothing out the shaking was to fit a heavy metal wheel, called a flywheel, to the engine. The spinning wheel evened out the pul­ses of power produced by the cylinders.