CONCORDE ACCORD
SUPERSONIC
promise
The 2 March this year marked the 50th anniversary of
Concorde’s maiden test flight. Now ‘Son of Concorde’
is waiting in the wings (albeit distant ones!), aiming
to eclipse its mighty forebear
W hen Concorde arrived on
the scene, it was truly
iconic and helped to
add a touch of glamour
to the engineering industry. Heralded
as a masterpiece of engineering, with
innovative carbon-bre brakes, y-by-wire
controls and its record-breaking ight
time, the plane’s design would mark the
future of air travel.
Sadly, the aircraft had its last ight
in October 2003, but a new supersonic
(faster than the speed of sound) airliner
aiming to stake a claim to the title ‘Son
of Concorde’ could have its rst ight next
year, while Boeing have unveiled plans
for a new hypersonic jet, travelling around
ve times the speed of sound, which
could y from New York to London in just
two hours, reaching speeds of Mach 5 –
approximately 3,800 mph. That’s about
1.5 hours faster than the time it took
Concorde, on average, to complete the
same journey. But don’t too excited at
the prospect. Boeing says it is still 20 to
30 years away from reality. So, what has
changed in the intervening years, as far
as engineering design is concerned?
DESIGN TOOLS PROGRESS
“Half a century on, engineers have far
superior aircraft design modelling tools to
work with than fty years ago,” says Chris
Hayhurst, European consulting manager
for MathWorks. “However,
there are still signicant
challenges. First, when
designing a brand-new
aircraft, it is important
for engineers to develop a
complete set of requirements
for the aircraft system. Yes, they
can partly be based on existing
designs, but they might include the
integration of innovative technologies
that haven’t been used previously and
will require extremely comprehensive
testing to meet the necessary safety
requirements. This is also the case
when understanding how a new aircraft
will interact with all other systems, such
as air trafc control, airline operational
management etc.
“Secondly, with increasing pressure
to be more environmentally friendly
and cut operational costs, reducing
fuel consumption requires designers to
minimise aircraft weight and increase
engine efciency. Yet this it very difcult
to achieve without sacricing safety,” he
cautions.
One of the most compelling uses
of computer modelling is to enable
engineers to complete comprehensive
testing of the full aircraft design before
building the rst physical prototype
aircraft. “This is particularly important
when previous ight test data from
conventional
aircraft won’t help you to understand
what will happen when travelling at
supersonic and hypersonic,” states
Hayhurst. “It can also be an expensive
process, if the prototype must be built
several times over. Simulation can also
help reduce the ight test time needed
to ultimately achieve airworthiness and
other certications for the aircraft.”
Back in the 1960s, the engineers
had limited design modelling tools, yet
they were able to design a revolutionary
machine, he points out. “When Concorde
was being developed, its design was
one of the very rst to use Computer
Aided Manufacture (CAM), but at that
point it was too early for the extensive
use of Computer Aided Design (CAD)
for mechanical parts. Since then, CADCAM
has been fully adopted by all
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