Actually the engine was doing quite fine. Nothing came out of its sides.
The incredible or magic chicken gun fires the frozen birds at up to 500 knots into the engine. A goose is more than an engine can take without failing, but the point is the failure must be contained, that is no debris may exit radially from the turbine. Anything exiting raidally is going to travel very fast and can easily slice through the aircraft.
I could never understand why jet engines don't have a grille or screen to protect the turbine from direct impact from a bird. Even if the bird was cut into smaller pieces before it hits the blades it surely wouldn't cause as much damage. Goldbardeb, maybe asked the fellas at work to try pitching a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken into one just to see?
Maybe the grille or screen would collect smaller debris much too easily and impede the air flow - but that is a guess from a man who has never even changed his own oil.
esop I think you are correct about the grills collecting debris. I may be wrong also, but I believe its something to do with the possibility of them collecting moisture, then the said moisture freezing and becoming a projectile.
I believe there have been some Russian fighter jets with screens on the jet intakes, designed for rough airstrips. And generally they don't work, since you need a pretty small screen grid to stop little rocks, which can still do a lot of damage. Too much of a screen, and you seriously impede airflow, especially at supersonic speeds.
The A-10s answer to rough airstrips was to place the engines up high.
All airbases frequently conduct FOD (foreign object damage) walk downs of the airstrips, to remove all little chunks of crap that might get into the engines. They also run magnets over the runways, as the metal chunkies tend to be the worst.
A bigger problem might be people getting sucked into jet intakes, and they haven't bothered placing intake screens for that.
FYI The Mig 29 was built with intakes that could be totally blocked. On take off from rough strips the air would flow in via the vents atop the fuselage and once airborne the baffles were lowered and normal airflow was resumed. Not sure whether the SU27 and following models copied the layout...
The Warthog's engines were indeed placed where they are primarily for rough landing capability / FOD ingestion prevention. However battlefield survivability was an equal reason. IR homing missiles can't track the exhaust as effectively as the fuselage and tail assembly helps shield the gases. Plus the intakes are further away from the large amounts of residue which their rather large primary weapon creates when fired!
I'd agree to that! Its a shame we can't crank up the assembly lines, and build more warthogs. They'll be useful for decades, even if they are obsolete against front line enemies. P51 Mustangs would be overkill in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sorry to spoil the title of the video but this isn't a chicken gun test! Here they're releasing a fan blade (the colored one) while the engine is running, to check that it wouldn't do too much damage to the airplane. If you get that kind of result by firing chickens, then the design may have to be rethought a bit.
There is no bird being fired into the engine, it is a blade test, the orange blade is rigged to explode. This is done to make sure the outer casing of the engine will not rupture if a blade breaks.
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