If you’ve ever wondered how a jet engine works, this is a pretty great video by YouTuber AgentJayZ (Likely unrelated to the hip-hop artist) on what an axial compressor looks like. Modern airliner engines use an axial setup, which has multiple compressor fans that spin to compress and direct air through non-moving stators. The air then moves on, typically, through several compressor stages of decreasing size to compress the air to make a more efficient fuel/air mixture in the combustion chamber. NASA, unsurprisingly, has a pretty good primer on axial compressors.
Turbine engines have a lot of uses outside of air transportation and AgentJayZ cracks open the compressor housing to show off the guts of a General Electric LM1500, an industrial turbine that makes 10,000 shaft horsepower. The LM1500 is based on the old GE J79 engines that were found in thoroughbred fighter jets like the F-4 and F-104 so it’s pretty cool to see how the compressor fans and stators fit together. Our illustrious host also gives a demonstration of fan-blade fatigue and if you are not a nervous flyer, googling “uncontained engine failure” will suggest to you the importance of regular compressor-fan maintenance
[Author’s note: Airliner fan-blade failures are really like one-in-a-billion events these days. I’m just messing with you.]
For giggles, here’s AgentJayZ demonstrating how many compressor stages are in an LM1500 by dropping a wayward screw down a rusting old compressor stage.
