Editing Motorjet

{{Short description|Type of jet engine}}
{{more citations needed|date=January 2009}}
[[File:WRDK.svg|thumb|300px|Main components of [[Mikoyan-Gurevich I-250]] motorjet-powered aircraft; the propeller is absent on some designs.]]
{{Seriesbox aircraft propulsion}}

A '''motorjet''' is a rudimentary type of [[jet engine]] which is sometimes referred to as ''thermojet'', a term now commonly used to describe a particular and completely unrelated [[pulsejet]] design.

== Design ==

At the heart the motorjet is an ordinary piston engine (hence, the term ''motor''), but instead of (or sometimes, as well as) driving a [[propeller (aircraft)|propeller]], it drives a [[Gas compressor|compressor]]. The compressed air is channeled into a [[combustion chamber]], where [[fuel]] is injected and ignited. The high temperatures generated by the combustion cause the gases in the chamber to expand and escape at high velocity from the [[exhaust gas|exhaust]], creating a thermal reactive force that provides useful thrust.

Motorjet engines provide greater thrust than a propeller alone mounted on a piston engine; this has been successfully demonstrated in a number of different aircraft. A [[jet engine]] also can provide thrust at higher speeds where a propeller becomes less efficient or even ineffective; in fact, a jet engine gains efficiency as speed rises, while a propeller loses it (outside of a certain design range). This gives better efficiency in either operating range than an aircraft powered by just a propeller or a jet. The same is true of the dual-powerplant aircraft experimented with after the [[turbojet]] became practicable, which were equipped with both a piston-driven propeller and a turbojet engine.

== History ==
* In 1908 [[France|French]] inventor [[René Lorin]] proposed using a piston engine to compress air that would then be mixed with fuel and burned to produce pulses of hot gas that would be expelled through a nozzle to generate a propelling force.<ref>{{cite book | last = Reithmaier | first = Larry | title = Mach 1 and Beyond | publisher = McGraw-Hill Professional | year = 1994 | isbn = 0-07-052021-6| page = 74}}</ref>
* In 1917, O. Morize of Châteaudun, France, proposed the Morize ejector scheme in which a reciprocating engine drove a compressor supplying air to a liquid-fueled combustion chamber which discharged into a convergent-divergent tube and ultimately out into the atmosphere.
* The term "motor jet" was established in a patent filed in Britain by J.H. Harris of Esher, U.K., in 1917.
* It was next explored by [[Secondo Campini]] in the early 1930s, although it was not until 1940 that an aircraft, the [[Caproni Campini N.1]] (sometimes referred to as C.C.2), would fly powered by his engine.  Campini used the term '''''thermojet''''' at this time to describe his motorjet.
* [[National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics|NACA]] engineer [[Eastman Jacobs]] was actively pursuing thermojet research in the early 1940s for a project that came to be known as "Jake's jeep", which was never completed, as [[turbojet]] technology overtook it.{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}
* Japanese engineers developed the [[Ishikawajima Tsu-11]] motorjet engine to power [[Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka]] aircraft as an alternative to the [[solid-propellant rocket]] engines that these aircraft were then using.
* The [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[Mikoyan-Gurevich I-250]], designed in 1944, used a piston engine to drive both a propeller at the nose of the plane, and a [[Kholshchevnikov VRDK]] motorjet leading to a jet exhaust at the tail. Between 10 and 50 I-250 (a.k.a. MiG-13) aircraft were produced, serviced, and flown by the Soviet Navy through 1950. The similarly designed [[Sukhoi Su-5]] was also produced as a prototype during the same period.

Motorjet research was nearly abandoned at the end of [[World War II]], as the [[turbojet]] was a more practical solution to jet power, using the jet exhaust to drive a [[gas turbine]] and providing the power to drive the compressor without the additional weight and complexity of a piston engine that generated no thrust. One of the primary advantages of the motorjet layout was that the reciprocating engine provided power for the compressor and no turbine power section was needed. However, metallurgy and understanding of the design of turbines had advanced to a point after World War II where it was feasible to create a turbine to operate reliably in the high-velocity hot-gas environment downstream of the combustor, and the motorjet idea lost favor.

==See also==
* [[Luigi Stipa]]
* [[Caproni Campini N.1]]
* [[Stipa-Caproni]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.nyethermodynamics.com/thermojet/index.html Nye Thermodynamics Thermojet]

[[Category:Jet engines]]
[[Category:Motorjet engines| ]]