Heinkel HeS 8
| HeS 8 | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type | Turbojet |
| National origin | Germany |
| Manufacturer | Heinkel |
| First run | September 1940 |
The Heinkel HeS 8 (prefix being an abbreviation for "Heinkel Strahltriebwerke"-Heinkel jet engine) was an early jet engine designed by Hans von Ohain while working at Heinkel. It was the first jet engine to be financially supported by the RLM, bearing the official name 109-001. Had development continued it would have been known as the Heinkel 001, but it does not appear this was used in practice.
The HeS 8 was intended to power the Heinkel He 280 twin-engine fighter, although both Heinkel and von Ohain preferred the axial HeS 30. A lengthy gestation period meant it was finally becoming ready for production at about the same time as the Junkers Jumo 004 and BMW 003. In 1942 work was ended on the HeS 8 and HeS 30, and Heinkel was ordered to move on to the larger Heinkel HeS 011 instead. The He 280 was left engineless, and was eventually abandoned.
By the time the HeS 3 program wound down in 1939, it appears that von Ohain no longer favoured the centrifugal compressor for jet engines. He had been "sold" on the axial compressor as early as 1938, after a meeting with D. Encke of AVA, but continued with the centrifugal design in the HeS 3 because it was much easier to work with. It is likely he would have developed an axial design as a follow-on to the HeS 3, but it appears the RLM was interested in keeping him working on centrifugal designs as a backup in case the various axial designs ran into problems.
The main problem with the centrifugal compressor was the large cross-sectional area. von Ohain had been looking at solutions to this problem as soon as the HeS 1 design was winding down in 1937. His first attempt at the HeS 3 was to separate the compressor and turbine —which were back-to-back in the HeS 1— and place the combustion chambers between them. Various problems in this original HeS 3 design forced them to abandon this layout for an updated HeS 3b, but it appears von Ohain felt it was still the best solution, and he returned to it for the HeS 8. The result was an engine that was only slightly wider than the compressor disk, whereas earlier models had piping lying outside the compressor disk and were therefore somewhat larger.
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