US Patent 12065967 Adaptive vertical lift engine (AVLE) fan

A turbofan engine has a fan portion in fluid communication with a core stream and a bypass stream of air separated by splitters disposed both upstream and downstream of the fan portion. A blade splitter (shroud) on the fan partially spans the fan blade thus separating the core and bypass streams downstream while leaving a gap upstream for communication between the flows. The communication gap expands the operational range of the fan over fans without the communication gap.