Patent ID: 7716932

Claim:
A turbofan duct assembly operable to direct a duct flow generated by a fan in a rearward direction into ambient and operable to be powered by a power source, said turbofan duct assembly comprising: a fan duct presenting fore and aft ends, said fan duct configured to surround the fan and extend rearwardly of the fan to the aft end, with the fan duct being operable to fluidly engage the duct flow; and a dilating fan duct nozzle operable to fluidly engage the duct flow discharged from the fan duct, said dilating fan duct nozzle comprising: a bracket attached adjacent the aft end of the fan duct, and a plurality of shiftable intermeshing tiles, including a plurality of drive tiles and a plurality of driven tiles, supported by the bracket and circumferentially spaced to cooperatively form a first arcuate continuous tiled nozzle section that at least partly defines an adjustably-sized nozzle orifice, the drive tiles and the driven tiles alternating in a circumferential direction and in intermeshing engagement so that the drive tiles and the driven tiles overlap and are radially shiftable with each other, and a drive assembly drivingly engaged with at least one of the drive tiles and configured to be drivingly attached to the power source, operable to radially shift the tiles being between nominal and dilated configurations to adjust the nozzle orifice size and thereby control the duct flow passing through the nozzle, wherein the plurality of driven tiles are driven by the plurality of drive tiles, said shiftable intermeshing tiles being circumferentially shiftable relative to each other and remaining overlapped as the tiles shift between the configurations so that the first tiled nozzle section remains continuous as the nozzle orifice is sized.