General Electric Company

Robert A Wall

Arthur P Adamson

Lawrence Butler

High by-pass fan jet engine includes counterrotating turbine blade sets for receiving hot combustion gases from a core engine portion and driving the fan blades through a planetary gear-type reduction gear assembly. Lightweight, highspeed, concentric, counterrotating shafts transmit power from both turbine blade sets to the fan via the reduction gear assembly. A pair of planetary gear assemblies with fixed fing gears and a rotatable common planetary gear carrier is used to drive a single set of fan blades via the carrier, and a pair of planetary gear assemblies with a fixed common planetary gear carrier and rotatable ring gears is used to drive two or more counterrotating fan blade sets via the ring gears. A low pressure 'booster' compressor feeding the core engine portion can be directly driven from one of the two high speed shafts.

Geared counterrotating turbine/fan propulsion system

A high bypass ratio turbofan engine having a fan section, a booster compressor disposed aft of the fan section relative to the flow of combustion gases through the engine, and a core section disposed aft of the booster compressor. A low pressure counterrotating turbine, disposed aft of the core section, is used for driving the fan section and the booster compressor. The counterrotating turbine includes at least one set of rotating turbine blades and at least one set of oppositely rotating counterrotating turbine blades. A twin spool shaft is provided for coupling the turbine blades to the booster compressor and for coupling the counterrotating turbine blades to the fan section. A reduction gear is disposed in the drive shaft for coupling the turbine blades to the fan section and for reducing the rotational speed of the turbine output power to match the rotational speed of the fan section thereby splitting the usable work of the turbine blades between the fan section and the booster.

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Wyoming, OH, United States of America

Robert A Wall