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aerospace industry l engineering

90 Years

of Jet Propulsion

January 2020 marked an important anniversary

for aviation. On 16th January 1930, Englishman

Frank Whittle patented the first jet engine.

Without our knowledge, it was the beginning

of the history of one of the most successful products

of První brněnská strojírna Velká Bíteš, a. s.

In 1930, the jet engine was patented by

an officer of the Royal Air Force (RAF),

Frank Whittle. His drawing included a compressor, a combustion chamber, a turbine

and a nozzle: all basic components used

in jet engines to this day. This type of

propulsion provided significantly more power than even the most powerful piston

engines.

International competition

d

Five years later, German physicist Hans

Joachim Pabst von Ohain started development on a similar design. Having

received strong support from the state administration, Germany won the race and

was the first to get an aircraft propelled

by a jet engine in the air. The first German experimental jet aircraft, Heinkel He 178, took off in 1939, while the British Gloster E.28/29

followed a whole two years

later. The development of

jet engines transformed

the way World War II

was fought and later also changed the landscape of air transport.

PBS is a Czech

flagship

d

Frank Whittle's brilliant invention was, in

part, the reason why

the Czech Republic

became a superpower

in production of aircraft

engines. The Czechoslovak aircraft industry started producing jet engines

after World War II. The only

purely Czech company that

currently develops jet engines

is První brněnská strojírna Velká

Bíteš, a. s. (PBS). Boasting over 200

years of history, the company has been supplying turbine engines to the

world for over 50 years. In the 1970s, the

company started development on air generators and auxiliary power units for starting up aircraft engines. PBS has been developing its own jet engines since 2001.

The first tests of a functional prototype of

special 2020

T+T Technika a trh