Nissan 370Z Forum - View Single Post

510z · 09-16-2009, 10:39 PM

Quote:

The engines proposed by Turbonique Inc. were turbine driven engines. These were, seen from the perspective of our 21st century, quite rudimentary. They consisted basically of a carefully designed circular chamber (snail housing) where a rocket type burner was ignited and the thrust of the burned gases was used to make a turbine spin at high revs. This movement was converted into a more useable power source by means of a reduction gear. The turbine reached speeds of 92,000 rpm. The reduction gear brought this movement to a more useable 5750 rpm speed with astonishing high torque output. The micro-turbo engines were really powerful !

It must be stressed, on the passage, that the Turbonique applications had, in general, a very short running time span: the thrust engines could run for one or two minutes, the superchargers for a little longer period (up to about 10 minutes) and the microturbo engines not much more than that.

..