General Electric Company

Michael James McMahon

Kurt David Murrow

Brendan Michael Freely

Andrew Breeze-Stringfellow

Trevor Howard Wood

A method of operating an aircraft engine coupled to a wing of an aircraft including: setting a pitch of a plurality of rotor blades of a rotor assembly of the aircraft engine at non-uniform pitch angles along a circumferential direction of the aircraft engine such that the plurality of rotor blades define a first pitch at a first position and a second pitch at a second position, wherein the second position is 180 degrees offset from the first position, and wherein the first pitch is different from the second pitch.

Aircraft engine

A turboprop engine includes a main nacelle body, a rotatable hub provided on the main nacelle body, a plurality of propellers connected to the rotatable hub, and a nacelle extension coupled to the main nacelle body, the nacelle extension including at least one wall defining an air intake inlet. The air intake inlet is movable in an airflow axis with respect to a trailing edge of a propeller in the plurality of propellers to vary a distance between the air intake inlet and the trailing edge of the propeller during various phases of operation of the turboprop engine.

Variable geometry inlet for turbopropeller inlet pressure recovery optimization

An aircraft equipped with a distributed fan propulsion system and methods of operating such aircraft are provided. In one aspect, an aircraft includes a wing having a top surface and a bottom surface. The aircraft also has a distributed propulsion system that includes a suction fan array having one or more fans mounted to the wing and a pressure fan array having one or more fans mounted to the wing. The fans of the suction fan array are each positioned primarily above the top surface of the wing and the fans of the pressure fan array are each positioned primarily below the bottom surface of the wing. The fans of the suction fan array are controllable independent of the fans of the pressure fan array so that the air pressure above and/or below the wing can be locally controlled, allowing for adjustment of lift on the wing.

Growing community of inventors

Cincinnati, OH, United States of America

Michael James McMahon