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Is a silent supersonic aircraft possible? NASA X-59 in the kitchen

Visualization of the X-59 in silent supersonic flight over a small town. | Font: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

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“The sonic boom shook the windows of the city. It was the sound of a supersonic aircraft, one of the few flying in those days. People stopped to look at the sky, surprised by such a powerful and fast aircraft, which has been rare in recent years. chat artificial intelligence ChatGPT-3.

Break the sound barrier without cracking the sky

2023 is the year that a new NASA-approved supersonic aircraft will take to the skies with passengers on board. But the X-59 will not knock windows on city houses, as described in ChatGPT-3. Artificial intelligence did not take into account in its history that the technological miracle of the expected aircraft lies in its noiselessness. Breaking the sound barrier without splitting the sky is a difficult task in testing.

The X-59 will fly at Mach 1.42, equivalent to about 1,760 km/h, about one and a half times the speed of sound, and is the first prototype of a future commercial airliner. At the moment it is designed for one pilot and an observer, but it is planned that in 2030 it will carry passengers on board. For example, we will travel between Madrid and Paris in half an hour, and cross the Atlantic in four. Space and time will be compressed.

To ensure the safety of the X-59 pilot, sophisticated life-support equipment undergoes a series of tests that include a simulation of the unlikely cockpit depressurization. NASA, CC BY-SA

Causes boom sound

Supersonic aircraft accomplished the task of flying faster than sound in the 1940s, and this, while quite a feat, makes them one of the most thunderous machines ever built by man.

The speed of sound is the speed at which pressure fluctuations are transmitted in a fluid, in this case air. It depends on several factors, but at sea level it is about 1234 km/h.

The phenomenon occurs when a particle collides with a neighboring one, this one with the next one, and so on, conveying a vibrational state, as if they were domino pieces. If an object such as an airplane is moving in the air, it will make noise. But if this object is moving faster than the sound transmission waves, then a shock wave is created (which makes a lot of noise) and generates what we know as a sonic boom or boom sound.

The resulting white disk is nothing more than water vapor condensed as a result of the shock wave. This phenomenon is known as the Prandtl-Glauert singularity.

The Prandtl-Glauert Singularity on a Finnish Aviation McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornet, registered in 2022 / Ewe Dz.

The noise generated by supersonic aircraft is so disturbing that it is illegal to fly them over urban areas or protected areas because it also affects flora and fauna.

The image shows a supersonic impact taken using the technique of schlieren photography, or strithoscopy, an optical process used to photograph changes in the density of a liquid. This is one of the first images of the interaction of shock waves from two supersonic aircraft flying in formation. NASA, CC BY

In addition, they are also opposed by the fact that they require a large amount of fuel to achieve and maintain high speeds, which makes them more expensive and less environmentally friendly than subsonic flights. And the commercial failure of the Concorde, which ended in the crash of its last flight with Air France, is still in the collective memory.

Key: its silent geometry

NASA has spent years solving these problems, and the answer is the X-59 QueSST, a working prototype built by aerospace company Lockheed Martin.

It is a swept-wing craft with a span of 29 meters, designed to fly at an altitude of about 55,000 feet (16.8 km) above sea level.

Simulation of the hydrodynamics of the Kh-59 aircraft concept during supersonic flight. The colors shown on the aircraft indicate surface pressure, with lower pressures shown in blue and higher pressures in red. The colors displayed in the airspace around the aircraft indicate the speed of the airflow, from blue indicating zero speed to higher speeds indicated in red. NASA/James S. Jensen, CC BY

Its design is the result of countless virtual simulations that allow hundreds of designs to be analyzed in Computational Fluid Models (CFD for its English acronym). Every detail of an aircraft can destroy its silent geometry.

For example, the fuselage is very long and penetrating, and it doesn’t have the typical cockpit we’re used to. A normal airplane cockpit would break the flow and make noise, so the X-59 pilot looks at the sky through a monitor.

The swept wing allows smooth penetration into the atmosphere. The tail contains a GE F414 engine at the top, and this is no coincidence either. Each of these details is considered a contribution to boom the sonic particles are small, separate, and spread out as the aircraft moves away, rather than merging (combining together) as is common in supersonic aircraft.

Don Durston, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center, with an X-59 aircraft model ready for testing in a supersonic wind tunnel. NASA/Glenn Research Center/Quentin Schwinn, CC BY

There is a virtual X-59 audio that is used to test it and determine if it meets the requirements set by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).

Its smaller size and improved cycle engine make it more economical and less polluting than other supersonic aircraft. In addition, it is equipped with formation flight technology that allows it to fly alongside other aircraft in order to reduce air resistance and improve fuel efficiency.

With all these improvements, NASA hopes to pave the way for supersonic commercial aviation once again, this time for good. Will he get it? The first test flight is expected this year. Let’s not miss the meeting.Talk

Alejandro Manuel Gomez San Juan, Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering, University of Vigo

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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