Comparison of Range of Aircraft Equipped with Variable Cycle Engine versus Turbofan Engine

Variable cycle engine has great advantage over the conventional engine during subsonic cruise. The method of comparing the ranges of the aircraft to evaluate the advantage of performance of variable cycle engine relative to conventional turbofan engine was put forward. Exacting installed engine performance is needed for calculating the range of the aircraft. Accurate installed engine performance was gained by taking advantage of inlet and nozzle characteristics. On this basis,an integrated performance computing model and method of aircraft / engine were established. Variation of installed performance of variable cycle engine and conventional turbofan engine was analysed during the throttle,then we calculated the subsonic cruise range of the variable cycle engine and conventional turbofan engine. The result showed that: the larger the fuel loaded by the aircraft,the larger the increment of subsonic cruise range and the more obvious the advantage of the aircraft equipped with the variable cycle engine by comparison the conventional turbofan engine under the unchanged takeoff total weight. The aircraft equipped with variable cycle engine has larger range.