The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a World War II-era fighter aircraft. The thermal efficiency is a term more commonly associated with heat engines like gas turbines or internal combustion engines rather than aircraft as a whole. However, I can provide a general explanation.
Thermal efficiency is a measure of how well an engine or system converts the energy from its fuel into useful work. It is often expressed as a percentage.
The thermal efficiency is expressed mathematically as:
where:
- is the thermal efficiency,
- is the thrust produced by the engine,
- is the jet velocity,
- ṁf is the mass flow rate of fuel,
- is the specific enthalpy of the fuel.