Interactive 3D / Aerospace

A jet engine you can explore.

A high-bypass turbofan running live in your browser. Nothing here is video. Scroll to move through the engine stage by stage, drag to look around it, switch the systems on and off. There is a short test at the end.

Loading engine
DragTwo fingers to orbit  /  scroll to move through the engine
Overview

High-bypass turbofan

Air enters at the fan and leaves at the nozzle. Most of it never reaches the fire, and that is the whole trick of a modern engine. The air that does reach the fire is squeezed, burned, and used to drive the very compressor that squeezed it.

Sections
Fan, compressors, combustor, turbines, nozzle
Spools
Two, turning at different speeds
View
Outer nacelle half hidden from the next step on
Step 01

The fan

Eighteen blades, a little over five metres across. Most of what you feel as thrust starts here, and most of the air it moves goes straight past the core without ever being burned. In a modern high-bypass engine that bypass air accounts for the large majority of total thrust.

Blades
18
Blade tip radius
2.6 m
Spool
Low pressure, shared with the LP turbine
Step 02

Low pressure compressor

The squeeze begins. Watch the core narrow as you move back: compression is geometry you can see, not a number on a chart. Also called the booster, it sits on the same shaft as the fan.

Blades
72 across multiple stages
Blade tip radius
1.23 m, down from 2.6 m at the fan
Also called
The booster
Step 03

High pressure compressor

The narrowest point in the whole engine. By the time air leaves here it is several hundred degrees hot from pressure alone, before a drop of fuel has been added. Squeezing a gas heats it, and that is why the compressor is the hottest thing in the engine that is not on fire.

Blades
120
Blade tip radius
0.85 m, down from 1.23 m at the booster
Spool
High pressure, driven by the HP turbine
Step 04

Combustor

The only place fuel burns, and far smaller than you would expect for the machine wrapped around it. This one is can-annular: a ring of discrete cans rather than one continuous chamber, each perforated so cooling air can film the inside of the liner.

Type
Can-annular
Cooling holes
Film air along the liner so it survives the flame
Temperature
The peak of the whole cycle
Step 05

High pressure turbine

Expansion starts doing work. These blades drive the compressor that squeezed the air in the first place, which is why the back of the engine and the front are really the same machine. Gas leaving here is cooler than at the combustor, because the turbine has taken energy out of it.

Blades
72
Drives
The high pressure compressor, directly
Surface
Heat-tinted alloy, hottest parts in the engine
Step 06

Low pressure turbine

The radius opens back out and the loop closes: this stage drives the fan at the very front, through a shaft running the whole length of the engine. The bands around the blade tips are shrouds, which seal against the casing and damp vibration.

Blades
146 across six stages
Shrouds
Six, rotating with the blades
Drives
The fan, through the LP shaft
Check yourself

Six questions.

Everything below is answered somewhere above. Scroll back up and look at the engine if you need to.

0 / 6

How it was built

Modelled, rigged, lit and shipped to the browser.

Every stage is separately addressable, which is the part that matters for training and sales material. A render shows someone a machine. This lets them take it apart and then proves they followed it, which is the difference between watching and understanding.

Delivered
1.28 MBDraco geometry, WebP textures
Geometry
46,000 faces12 addressable assemblies
Rendering
Real timePBR, image-based lighting, shadow maps
Runs on
Any browserNo plugin, no install, works on a phone
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