General Electric Company
Aircraft having an aft engine and internal flow passages

Abstract:

An air injection assembly for an aircraft is provided. The aircraft includes a fuselage extending between a forward end and an aft end along a longitudinal direction and a boundary layer ingestion fan mounted to the fuselage at the aft end of the fuselage. The air injection assembly includes a plurality of injection ports defined on a surface of the fuselage at a location upstream of the boundary layer ingestion fan. A supplemental airflow is provided through a fluid passageway to the injection ports where it is ejected to displace at least a portion of relatively higher velocity boundary layer airflow. In this manner, the airflow entering boundary layer ingestion fan is more uniform, has less swirl distortion, and has a lower average velocity.