Is Supersonic Flight Realistic Or Just Some Concept Plane?

We are often told how loud supersonic booms are, but rarely actually get the chance to hear such sounds ourselves. One of the rear time boom was heard in American city in 2010 when a small seaplane entered restricted airspace when former president, Barack Obama was visiting. Twin F15 eagles were scrabbled to intercept the seaplane and then the process broke the sound barrier over the sea at the area. The low flying aircrafts created a boom strong enough to shake homes and was heard as far as several distances. This caused a huge calls and local authority filled the streets.

Created with CorelDraw

Why Concorde Failed

This phenomenal of sonic boom is one of the key factors that caused the Concorde being economy failure but high flying aircraft do not create near as loud booms as a sound energy is dissipated as it travels through the air. The other limiting factor preventing the Concorde from achieving economy success was its ill economy. When comparing it to one of its major competitors, Boeing 747, it consumed 50% more fuel carrying equal amount of passengers and having about hefty maximum range.

The range was so poor that the plane was basically limited to transit over and flight. As it could not cross the Pacific Ocean, it was bound on flying over land as a result of those high sonic booms. Although the entire plane was treated like first class, flight tickets were still very high compared to competitor's First Class offerings and it was difficult to find enough people to pay those prices regularly. Although the Concorde was, for all intension and purposes safe and successful aircraft for the entirety of its twenty seven years career. There were more than a handful of reasons for the aircraft to be officially retired in 2003.

Growing pressure from the British and French government, considering of its fuel cost, the lack of route options and the simple shortage of mass market potential simply killed this iconic aircraft. So for the next generation supersonic aircraft to succeed they are going to have to overcome these challenges and this is exactly what Boom Technology plans to do.

Boom Technology

Boom is a company aiming to create forty five passengers civilian aircraft to fly at Mach 2.2 and the price comparable to Business Class ticket on a regular airline. The last concerning supersonic flight overland is still on place, so their plans are currently focusing on creating economically viable trans-oceanic flight. Like a London to New York flight that will take only three hours fifteen minutes for the price of $2,500. A San Francisco to Tokyo flight that will take just five hours thirty minutes and cost $3,250 each way while Los Angeles to Sydney with the flight time of six hours and forty five minutes will take $3,500 each way.

These are still extremely expensive flight but they open up the possibility of getting an early morning flight. Arriving from Tokyo for business meeting with associates, being back in time to talk the kids to bed and you know time is money for money people.

Boom are currently developing two aircraft, an all-premium class airliner and geometrically similar two-seater jet called XP-One. The XP-One will be a one for scale demonstration aircraft intended to be classified and proven concept for larger airliner.

When the Concorde is being developed, computer was rarely used for design work. Everything was done on paper and tested on wind tower. Today, the engineers have been craving credible design software allowing them to develop the prototype designs and have powerful computational analysis software that can test the designs the same day without pouring money into building prototype and wind towers. This allows them to twist the designs to the finest taste to create the most efficient aircraft possible. What once took days and thousands of dollars to test now take a single engineer a few hours.

These couple of cabin fiber process is allowing the design of the Boom supersonic aircraft to be literarily perfectly shaped and perform well at high temperature of such supersonic flight.

So beyond these advantages, what are the difference between Concorde and Boom?

• Boom believe that the 30% increase in fuel efficiency would reduce operating cost significantly to allow a viable business model. Concorde consumed 16.7 litres of fuel every hundred kilometers per passenger.
• Concorde had an average passenger capacity of about a hundred with twenty five rows with four seats in each. Boom plan to have just forty five passengers each getting their own window seat and oil access, creating a much more enjoyable experience over that of Concord. But it also makes advantage with 30% decrease in fuel consumption per passenger much more difficult.

Design features

Now let us look at some of the design figures their engineers introduced to achieve this goal. Both planes feature in extremely thin Delta Wings. Made after the triangular Greek man, Delta. This design feature is a sensor to allow the wings to function at both sub-sonic and supersonic speed. Soon I will make a post about why planes’ wings are angled backwards and then you will understand that swiping the wings is incredibly important for planes that are travelling close to the speed of sound. It is also important for aircraft breaking the speed of sound as well.

As an object approaches the speed of sound, it experiences a sharp increase in coefficient of drag.

The drag force of an object increases with the sqaure of velocity.

So creating a streamline aircraft is incredibly important for supersonic aircraft especially when fuel efficiency is paramount. Also, we want to minimize the cross section area of the aircraft to reduce drag. But we also want to minimize the changes in cross section area along the length of the plane to reduce wave drag.

Wave drag is a form of drag that arises as a result of shock wave.

Area Rule - Made with CorelDraw

If we compare two shapes with the same maximum cross section area, one is loaded and the other has a sudden change in cross section area, we can see that the later has a more coefficient of drag as it enters supersonic speed. This is something the designers of Boom have clearly taken into account as they have narrowed the Fuselage where it meets the wing as the wing increases the cross section area of the plane in that location. Concorde did not do this as it would have added too much to manufacturing cost at the time. This is called the Area Rule.

Swiping the wings backwards decreases the coefficient of drag significantly at subsonic and supersonic speeds too. And the Delta wing of Boom has a greater swing angle than the Concorde with 70 degree while the Concorde is 55. The Delta Wings we have in both planes maintain a thin aerodynamic wing thanks to the short Wingspan long Chord reducing the structure load on the wing compared to the long Wingspan and the long Chord of conventional airplanes.

Concorde vs Boom (Delta Wings): Wing Angle - Made with CorelDraw

The Delta Wing perform well at low speeds too as a result of unique swollen vertexes that form at the upper surface of the wing. On a traditional aircraft wing, the swollen vertex is formed only at the wing tips. On a Delta Wing, they form on nearly the entire wing surface and reduce a considerable amount of lift. This is particularly apparent on top tails where the vertexes can be seen forming at the upper surface of the wing due to the water vapor condensing in the low pressure vertex. The Delta wings gain additional lift particularly on landing as a result of the ground effect with the downwards of the air between the wing and the ground creating air. But generally, lift uses this technique with a larger angle of attack. On the Concorde angle of attack on landing is so high that the nose of the plane needs to be totally downward to allow the pilots to see what they are doing.

Fuselage

Boom also uses a shiny Fuselage which helps to maintain a center lift as the plane gains speed. As a supersonic plane gains lift, the center of lift tends to move backward, creating issues for balance and control of the aircraft. The shine is rich and extends through the wing as you can see on the SR71. This structure generates more lift at supersonic speeds and subsonic speeds and thus helps to hold the center of lift location.

Engines

The engines may be the most interesting part of the design. At supersonic speeds, the air is efficiently slown down to the ideal subsonic speed for the engine precisely shaking the shockwaves to achieve ideal compression at a range of speed in flight range.

The Concorde use Turbojet engines which are superior for supersonic flight over Turbofan engines as it has a smaller front area which reduces drag. The Russian supersonic jet airliner TU-144 initially used Turbofan engines but later changed to turbojet and gained significant increase in efficiency. But today's engines are much more efficient and Boom and reach their performance target with a medium bypassed Turbofan engines which also reduces the noise on takeoff and landing and important traits to allow the plane to land in many airports.

Departing Thoughts

Boom is not just concept panes like Aral D8 show previously. It is an actual plane in development and the company poured in thirty three million dollars investment recently. The flight test of XP-One was successful and we can be in for real machines for civilian supersonic flight in the near future. And with this, I can tell you that the Supersonic flight is realistic and will eventually be successful.

References

• Why Concorde failed
• A new era of supersonic flight is almost here. But nobody can agree
• Supersonic aircraft
• Boom technology

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