Go fast and slow down

Our quest for high-speed travel, the kind that will someday take us across continents in hours, began almost immediately after the first powered flight, just over a century ago. It all started with better engines, accompanied by sleek, solid airframes, as designs eventually evolved to achieve a breakthrough in faster-than-sound or supersonic flight just over four decades later.

What followed was the development of unique “X planes,” indicating their status as experimental research, each successively breaking the airspeed records of the former for what can be achieved in human-controlled flight. The Concorde offered civilian travelers the opportunity to experience high-speed flight, if only in a brief and exclusive fashion, before taking its bow, limited not by technology but by cost.

Fast forward two decades later and fast commercial aircraft are making a comeback with the race to build supersonic airliners underway. Meanwhile, various designs for the first hypersonic passenger planes, at nearly five times the speed of sound, inspire us to dream of a future where time slows down a bit so that we can accomplish more and the space between us. gets smaller to connect more.

In fact, the small advantage we gain over time and space is probably the main driver of this need for speed, along with perhaps the pleasure of reaching daredevil status.

The hypersonic flight that takes us half the world in just two hours is a game-changer in mobility with the potential to change life as we know it. Exploration and the education that goes with it will be stimulated. Social, cultural and linguistic exchanges will be dynamic. The response to disasters around the world can be greatly improved. Yet the caveat that accompanies most technological advancements also applies here, as the benefits of access leave the door open for threats. This in itself has slowed progress in the broad, interdisciplinary scientific fields that govern hypersonic flight.

The race for hypersonic travel is fraught with technological challenges to which some of the answers are disparate among researchers working in isolation in various parts of the world.

Challenges

The seemingly easy transition over the past decades to achieving high-speed flight is not to be taken lightly. Supersonic flight has faced major challenges in terms of sonic boom noise as the aircraft transitions to reach speeds faster than the speed of sound.

Current technologies to counter them include jet mixer and nozzle designs, new sound absorbing materials, and operational strategies that reduce impact flight profiles over land. However, the innovation required to overcome the challenges of achieving sustained hypersonic flight, at more than five times the speed of sound, is much more complex.

Air breathing engines or scramjets, named for their use of atmospheric oxygen for propulsion, show promise for achieving the efficiency necessary to achieve these speeds. Yet innovation in new fuels is necessary for sustainability.

The extreme heat generated by the friction of the rapidly moving air over the leading edges of the aircraft creates temperatures in the order of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, which is beyond what a given material is capable of. can endure without rapid deterioration. The formation of a plasma sheath around the wing surfaces and leading edges due to extreme speeds interferes with radio communication. Technologies to detect the integrity and behavior of materials are sorely lacking. Navigating the regulatory authorities for flight and meeting airspace operating standards will take a lot of time and effort.

Slowly

As daunting as these challenges may seem, they have not hampered the momentum of researchers and engineers, many of whom work tirelessly in research labs and startups to creatively conceptualize and test new and original solutions.

One might mistake this rush for hypersonic travel as a sign of our collective impatience to “get there faster.” Unlike that, faster flight gives us the power to cheat time so that we can slow it down and deepen our experience wherever our destination is.

Going fast is really the portal to chasing away many sunsets in this one ride we call life.

Seetha Raghavan is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCF. She can be reached at [email protected].

The UCF Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who sit on a one-year panel. A new column is published every Wednesday on UCF today then broadcast on WUCF-FM (89.9) between 7:50 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Sunday. The opinions expressed are those of the columnists and are not necessarily shared by the University of Central Florida.