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92-584: The Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle was an early design for a supersonic transport . Unlike most competing designs which envisioned larger trans-Atlantic aircraft and led to the likes of the Boeing 2707 , the Super-Caravelle was a much smaller, shorter range design intended to replace Sud Aviation 's earlier and successful Caravelle . Design work started in 1960 and was announced in 1961 at the Paris Air Show , but

184-407: A 2.7-litre flat four and a 4.1-litre flat six , the cylinders on both being identical with bore and stroke of 3.75in (95mm). The engines had the flywheel at the front of the engine, and the crankshaft had intermediate bearings between each pair of cylinders. Drive was to the rear wheels via a dual helical epicyclic gears and helical bevel axle. The cars were listed at £735 for the four and £900 for

276-543: A class, can supply increased fuel efficiency at supersonic speeds, even though their specific fuel consumption is greater at higher speeds. Because their speed over the ground is greater, this decrease in efficiency is less than proportional to speed until well above Mach 2, and the consumption per unit distance is lower. When Concorde was being designed by Aérospatiale – BAC , high bypass jet engines (" turbofan " engines) had not yet been deployed on subsonic aircraft. Had Concorde entered service against earlier designs like

368-473: A compromise in performance is chosen, often to the detriment of low speed flight. For example, Concorde had very high drag (a lift to drag ratio of about 4) at slow speed, but it travelled at high speed for most of the flight. Designers of Concorde spent 5000 hours optimizing the vehicle shape in wind tunnel tests to maximize the overall performance over the entire flightplan. The Boeing 2707 featured swing wings to give higher efficiency at low speeds, but

460-525: A consistent decline in newsprint and pulp prices after 1923, which was caused by overexpansion of the Canadian industry and wasn't predicted by either party of the project, both lacking experience in paper trade. Since on a falling paper market longtime players with established customer bases had a clear advantage, shareholders sold their well-working but overleveraged and loss-making business to International Paper & Power Company in 1927. The deal left AW with

552-542: A controlled dive during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base. The crew were William Magruder (pilot), Paul Patten (copilot), Joseph Tomich (flight engineer), and Richard H. Edwards (flight test engineer). This is the first supersonic flight by a civilian airliner. In total, 20 Concordes were built: two prototypes, two development aircraft and 16 production aircraft. Of the sixteen production aircraft, two did not enter commercial service and eight remained in service as of April 2003. All but two of these aircraft are preserved;

644-415: A few decades. These materials, such as carbon fibre and Kevlar are much stronger for their weight (important to deal with stresses) as well as being more rigid. As per-seat weight of the structure is much higher in an SST design, structural improvements would have led to a greater proportional improvement than the same changes in a subsonic aircraft. Higher fuel costs and lower passenger capacities due to

736-433: A guide and means of comparison, observing that no detectable ozone loss was evident from approximately 213 megatons of explosive energy being released in 1962, so therefore the equivalent amount of NOx from "1047" Concordes flying "10 hours a day", would likewise, not be unprecedented. In 1981 models and observations were still irreconcilable. More recent computer models in 1995 by David W. Fahey, an atmospheric scientist at

828-465: A loss of £2.8M, and the whole group collapsed. Shipbuilding was the major division of the company. From 1879 to 1880 the predecessor shipbuilding company of Charles Mitchell laid down a cruiser for the Chilean Navy at Low Walker Yard. This vessel was later supplied to Japan as the 'Tsukushi' of 1883; the ship was launched as of Armstrong Mitchell build. Between 1885 and 1918 Armstrong built warships for

920-855: A major role in the Siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War was developed by Armstrong. After the Great War, Armstrong Whitworth converted its Scotswood Works to build railway locomotives. From 1919 it rapidly penetrated the locomotive market due to its modern plant. Its two largest contracts were 200 2-8-0s for the Belgian State Railways in 1920 and 327 Black 5 4-6-0s for the LMS in 1935/36. AW also modified locomotives. In 1926 Palestine Railways sent six of its H class Baldwin 4-6-0 locomotives to AW for conversion into 4-6-2 tank locomotives to work

1012-485: A mode of transport does not typically lead to such technological investments to increase the speed. Instead, the service providers prefer to compete in service quality and cost. An example of this phenomenon is high-speed rail . The speed limit of rail transport had been pushed so hard to enable it to effectively compete with road and air transport. But this achievement was not done for different rail operating companies to compete among themselves. This phenomenon also reduces

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1104-584: A much stronger (and therefore heavier) structure because their fuselage must be pressurized to a greater differential than subsonic aircraft, which do not operate at the high altitudes necessary for supersonic flight. These factors together meant that the empty weight per seat of Concorde is more than three times that of a Boeing 747. Concorde and the TU-144 were both constructed of conventional aluminum: Concorde of Hiduminium and TU-144 of duralumin . Modern, advanced materials were not to come out of development for

1196-512: A second flight from Edinburgh , and a third which had taken off from Heathrow on a loop flight over the Bay of Biscay . By the end of the 20th century, projects like the Tupolev Tu-244 , Tupolev Tu-344 , SAI Quiet Supersonic Transport , Sukhoi-Gulfstream S-21 , High Speed Civil Transport , etc. had not been realized. For all vehicles traveling through air, the force of drag is proportional to

1288-480: A serious issue due to the high altitudes at which the planes flew, but experiments in the mid-1960s such as the controversial Oklahoma City sonic boom tests and studies of the USAF 's North American XB-70 Valkyrie proved otherwise (see Sonic boom § Abatement ). By 1964, whether civilian supersonic aircraft would be licensed was unclear, because of the problem. The annoyance of a sonic boom can be avoided by waiting until

1380-620: A single return trip could be made per day, so the extra speed was not an advantage to the airline other than as a selling feature to its customers. The proposed American SSTs were intended to fly at Mach 3, partly for this reason. However, allowing for acceleration and deceleration time, a trans-Atlantic trip on a Mach 3 SST would be less than three times as fast as a Mach 1 trip. Since SSTs produce sonic booms at supersonic speeds they are rarely permitted to fly supersonic over land, and must fly supersonic over sea instead. Since they are inefficient at subsonic speeds compared to subsonic aircraft, range

1472-424: A speed increase. Also, for-profit companies generally prefer low risk business plans with high probabilities of appreciable profit, but an expensive leading-edge technological research and development program is a high-risk enterprise, as it is possible that the program will fail for unforeseeable technical reasons or will meet cost overruns so great as to force the company, due to financial resource limits, to abandon

1564-464: A subsidiary company known as Vickers-Armstrongs . The aircraft and Armstrong Siddeley motors business were bought by J. D. Siddeley and became a separate entity. Production at the Scotswood Works ended in 1979 and the buildings were demolished in 1982. The forerunner companies, W. G. Armstrong & Co. and later, from 1883 Sir WG Armstrong Mitchell & Company , were heavily involved in

1656-435: A supersonic aircraft needs to change with its speed for optimal performance. Thus, an SST would ideally change shape during flight to maintain optimal performance at both subsonic and supersonic speeds. Such a design would introduce complexity which increases maintenance needs, operations costs, and safety concerns. In practice all supersonic transports have used essentially the same shape for subsonic and supersonic flight, and

1748-524: A threat that was, in 1974, seemingly validated by an MIT team commissioned by the United States Department of Transportation . However, while many purely theoretical models were indicating the potential for large ozone losses from SST nitrogen oxides ( NOx ), other scientists in the paper " Nitrogen Oxides, Nuclear Weapon Testing , Concorde and Stratospheric Ozone " turned to historical ozone monitoring and atmospheric nuclear testing to serve as

1840-454: A typical wing design will cut its L/D ratio in half (e.g., Concorde managed a ratio of 7.14, whereas the subsonic Boeing 747 has an L/D ratio of 17). Because an aircraft's design must provide enough lift to overcome its own weight, a reduction of its L/D ratio at supersonic speeds requires additional thrust to maintain its airspeed and altitude. Jet engine design shifts significantly between supersonic and subsonic aircraft. Jet engines, as

1932-624: A vice president with Lockheed , stated to various magazines that an SST constructed of steel weighing 250,000 pounds (110,000 kg) could be developed for $ 160 million and in production lots of 200 or more sold for around $ 9 million. But it was the Anglo-French development of the Concorde that set off panic in the US industry, where it was thought that Concorde would soon replace all other long range designs, especially after Pan Am took out purchase options on

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2024-404: A year later. A total of 1,464 locomotives were built at Scotswood Works before it was converted back to armaments manufacture in 1937. After the end of WWI demand for armaments and naval ships all but evaporated, and Armstrong Whitworth had to look into diversifying its business. The company built a hydroelectric station at Nymboida, New South Wales , near Grafton, Australia in 1923–1924. This

2116-421: Is a function of forward speed, which decreases from propellers, to fans, to no bypass at all as speed increases. Additionally, the large frontal area taken up by the low-pressure fan at the front of the engine increases drag, especially at supersonic speeds, and means the bypass ratios are much more limited than on subsonic aircraft. For example, the early Tu-144S was fitted with a low bypass turbofan engine which

2208-442: Is deteriorated and the number of routes that the aircraft can fly non-stop is reduced. This also reduces the desirability of such aircraft for most airlines. Supersonic aircraft have higher per-passenger fuel consumption than subsonic aircraft; this makes the ticket price necessarily higher, all other factors being equal, as well as making that price more sensitive to the price of oil. (It also makes supersonic flights less friendly to

2300-580: Is displayed in the Discovery Museum , Newcastle upon Tyne . Armstrong Whitworth established an Aerial Department in 1912. This later became the Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company . When Vickers and Armstrong Whitworth merged in 1927 to form Vickers-Armstrongs, Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft was bought out by J. D. Siddeley and became a separate entity. The Elswick Ordnance Company (sometimes referred to as Elswick Ordnance Works, but usually as "EOC")

2392-403: Is low at take-off, but is forced high during supersonic cruise. Transition between the two modes would occur at some point during the climb and back again during the descent (to minimize jet noise upon approach). The difficulty is devising a variable cycle engine configuration that meets the requirement for a low cross-sectional area during supersonic cruise. The sonic boom was not thought to be

2484-433: Is more efficient, it is still less efficient than flying subsonically. Another issue in supersonic flight is the lift to drag ratio (L/D ratio) of the wings. At supersonic speeds, airfoils generate lift in an entirely different manner than at subsonic speeds, and are invariably less efficient. For this reason, considerable research has been put into designing wing planforms for sustained supersonic cruise. At about Mach 2,

2576-486: Is not able to withstand temperatures much over 127 °C; above 127 °C the aluminium gradually loses its properties that were brought about by age hardening. For aircraft that have flown at Mach 3, materials such as stainless steel ( XB-70 Valkyrie , MiG-25 ) or titanium ( SR-71 , Sukhoi T-4 ) have been used. The range of an aircraft depends on three efficiencies which appear in the Breguet range equation. They are

2668-608: Is still in use and is substantially original. In 1925 the company tendered unsuccessfully to construct the South Brisbane-Richmond Gap (on the New-South Wales-Queensland border) section of the last stage of the standard gauge railway linking Sydney and Brisbane . This was a heavily engineered railway which includes a long tunnel under the Richmond Range forming the state border and a spiral just south of

2760-399: The 40 range. This was joined by four larger cars ranging from the 2.7-litre 15/20 to the 3.7-litre 25.5 . The first six-cylinder model, the 30/50 with 5.1-litre 90 mm (3.5 in) bore by 135 mm (5.3 in) stroke engine came in 1912 with the option of electric lighting. This grew to 5.7 litres in 1913. At the outbreak of war, as well as the 30/50, the range consisted of

2852-477: The Boeing 707 or de Havilland Comet , it would have been much more competitive, though the 707 and DC-8 still carried more passengers. When these high bypass jet engines reached commercial service in the 1960s, subsonic jet engines immediately became much more efficient, closer to the efficiency of turbojets at supersonic speeds. One major advantage of the SST disappeared. Turbofan engines improve efficiency by increasing

Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle - Misplaced Pages Continue

2944-413: The Boeing 747 carrying four times that, the speed and fuel advantages of the SST concept were taken away by sheer size. Another problem was that the wide range of speeds over which an SST operates makes it difficult to improve engines. While subsonic engines had made great strides in increased efficiency through the 1960s with the introduction of the turbofan engine with ever-increasing bypass ratios ,

3036-553: The Humber River ) received support from the local government and loan guarantees both from it and the UK; Squires even campaigned on it, making "Hum on the Humber" his slogan for the 1923 Newfoundland general election . The company was heavily involved with the establishment of the town of Deer Lake. The hydroelectric station there was built between 1922 and 1925, while the canal system used by

3128-467: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , and others, suggest that the drop in ozone would be at most, "no more" than 1 to 2% if a fleet of 500 supersonic aircraft [were] operated. Fahey expressed that this would not be a fatal obstacle for an advanced SST development – while "a big caution flag...[it] should not be a showstopper for advanced SST development" because "removing the sulfur in

3220-589: The Royal Navy , Beiyang Fleet , Imperial Russian Navy , Brazil Navy Imperial Japanese Navy , and the United States Navy . Amongst these were HMS Glatton which, due to bodged construction, suffered a magazine explosion in Dover Harbour less than one month after commissioning. Armstrong Mitchell and later Armstrong Whitworth built many merchant ships, freighters, tank-ships, and dredgers; notable among them

3312-548: The Tu-144 , which the western press nicknamed the "Concordski". The SST was seen as particularly offensive due to its sonic boom and the potential for its engine exhaust to damage the ozone layer . Both problems impacted the thinking of lawmakers, and eventually Congress dropped funding for the US SST program in March 1971, and all overland commercial supersonic flight was banned over

3404-601: The Wilson-Pilcher , designed by Walter Gordon Wilson , and produced cars under the Armstrong Whitworth name until 1919, when the company merged with Siddeley-Deasy and to form Armstrong Siddeley . The Wilson-Pilcher was an advanced car, originally with a 2.4-litre engine, that had been made in London from 1901 until 1904 when production moved to Newcastle. When Armstrong Whitworth took over production two models were made,

3496-409: The coefficient of drag ( C d ), to the square of the airspeed and to the air density. Since drag rises rapidly with speed, a key priority of supersonic aircraft design is to minimize this force by lowering the coefficient of drag. This gives rise to the highly streamlined shapes of SSTs. To some extent, supersonic aircraft also manage drag by flying at higher altitudes than subsonic aircraft, where

3588-532: The delta wing in most studies, including the Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle and Bristol Type 223 , although Armstrong-Whitworth proposed a more radical design, the Mach 1.2 M-Wing . Avro Canada proposed several designs to TWA that included Mach 1.6 double-ogee wing and Mach 1.2 delta-wing with separate tail and four under-wing engine configurations. Avro's team moved to the UK where its design formed

3680-555: The 1900s. The owners of the Reid Newfoundland Company convinced AW to invest in building a second paper mill at Corner Brook , to be supplied with hydroelectricity from a generating station 50 km away at Deer Lake . A joint venture , the Newfoundland Power and Paper Company, was founded in 1923. After much fighting between Harry Reid and then-PM of the dominion Richard Squires , the so-called Humber project (after

3772-488: The 3-litre 17/25 and the 3.8-litre 20/30 . The cars were usually if not always bodied by external coachbuilders and had a reputation for reliability and solid workmanship. The company maintained a London sales outlet at New Bond Street. When Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers merged, Armstrong Whitworth's automotive interests were purchased by J D Siddeley as Armstrong Siddeley , based in Coventry . An Armstrong Whitworth car

Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle - Misplaced Pages Continue

3864-409: The 4.3-litre 18/22 and in 1910 by the 3.7-litre 25 , which seems to have shared the same chassis as the 30 and 40 . In 1911, a new small car appeared in the shape of the 2.4-litre 12/14 , called the 15.9 in 1911, featuring a monobloc engine with pressure lubrication to the crankshaft bearings. This model had an 110-inch (2,800 mm) wheelbase compared with the 120 inches (3,000 mm) of

3956-648: The Armstrong breech-loading gun, with which the British Army was re-equipped after the Crimean War . In 1882, it merged with the shipbuilding firm of Charles Mitchell to form Armstrong Mitchell & Company and at the time its works extended for over a mile (about 2 km) along the bank of the River Tyne . Armstrong Mitchell merged again with the engineering firm of Joseph Whitworth in 1897. The company expanded into

4048-421: The Concorde. Congress was soon funding an SST design effort, selecting the existing Lockheed L-2000 and Boeing 2707 designs, to produce an even more advanced, larger, faster and longer ranged design. The Boeing 2707 design was eventually selected for continued work, with design goals of ferrying around 300 passengers and having a cruising speed near to Mach 3 . The Soviet Union set out to produce its own design,

4140-536: The London–New York route in mind. The plane was allowed into Washington, D.C. (at Dulles in Virginia ), and the service was so popular that New Yorkers were soon complaining because they did not have it. It was not long before Concorde was flying into JFK . Along with shifting political considerations, the flying public continued to show interest in high-speed ocean crossings. This started additional design studies in

4232-565: The PR's steeply graded branch between Jaffa and Jerusalem. PR also sent another six H Class Baldwins for their defective steel fireboxes to be replaced with copper ones. AW's well-equipped works included its own design department and enabled it to build large locomotives, including an order for 30 engines of three types for the modernisation of the South Australian Railways in 1926. These included ten 500 class 4-8-2 locomotives, which were

4324-425: The SST fleet would emit ~96 million metric tons of CO₂ per year (like American , Delta and Southwest combined in 2017), 1.6 to 2.4 gigatonnes of CO₂ over their 25-year lifetime: one-fifth of the international aviation carbon budget if aviation maintains its emissions share to stay under a 1.5 °C climate trajectory . Noise exposed area around airports could double compared to existing subsonic aircraft of

4416-499: The UK license for Sulzer diesels from 1919, and by the 1930s was building diesel locomotives and railcars. An early example is the Tanfield Railway 's 0-4-0 diesel-electric shed pilot, No.2 , which was built by AW as works number D22 in 1933. In the same year, the company launched the UK's first mainline diesel locomotive, the 800 bhp "Universal". It was successful in trials, but not repaired after an engine crankcase explosion

4508-466: The US, under the name "AST" (Advanced Supersonic Transport). Lockheed's SCV was a new design for this category, while Boeing continued studies with the 2707 as a baseline. By this time, the economics of past SST concepts were no longer reasonable. When first designed, the SSTs were envisioned to compete with long-range aircraft seating 80 to 100 passengers such as the Boeing 707 , but with newer aircraft such as

4600-415: The US. Presidential advisor Russell Train warned that a fleet of 500 SSTs flying at 65,000 ft (20 km) for a period of years could raise stratospheric water content by as much as 50% to 100%. According to Train, this could lead to greater ground-level heat and hamper the formation of ozone . Later, an additional threat to the ozone was hypothesized as a result of the exhaust's nitrogen oxides ,

4692-405: The aerodynamic efficiency, which says how much wanted lift can be produced without too much unwanted drag, powerplant efficiency, which says how much fuel is converted into moving the aircraft against its drag resistance, and structural efficiency, which says how heavy the structure is compared to the fuel and passengers it can carry. Airlines potentially value very fast aircraft, because it enables

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4784-524: The aerodynamic requirement for a narrow fuselage make SSTs an expensive form of commercial civil transportation compared with subsonic aircraft. For example, the Boeing 747 can carry more than three times as many passengers as Concorde while using approximately the same amount of fuel. Nevertheless, fuel costs are not the bulk of the price for most subsonic aircraft passenger tickets. For the transatlantic business market that SST aircraft were utilized for, Concorde

4876-591: The air density is lower. As speeds approach the speed of sound, the additional phenomenon of wave drag appears. This is a powerful form of drag that begins at transonic speeds (around Mach 0.88 ). Around Mach 1, the peak coefficient of drag is four times that of subsonic drag. Above the transonic range, the coefficient drops drastically again, although remains 20% higher by Mach 2.5 than at subsonic speeds. Supersonic aircraft must have considerably more power than subsonic aircraft require to overcome this wave drag, and although cruising performance above transonic speed

4968-644: The aircraft is at high altitude over water before reaching supersonic speeds; this was the technique used by Concorde. However, it precludes supersonic flight over populated areas. Supersonic aircraft have poor lift/drag ratios at subsonic speeds as compared to subsonic aircraft (unless technologies such as variable-sweep wings are employed), and hence burn more fuel, which results in their use being economically disadvantageous on such flight paths. Concorde had an overpressure of 1.94 lb/sq ft (93 Pa) (133 dBA SPL). Overpressures over 1.5 lb/sq ft (72 Pa) (131 dBA SPL) often cause complaints. If

5060-502: The aircraft spends a considerable amount of time in cruise. SST designs flying at least three times as fast as existing subsonic transports were possible, and would thus be able to replace as many as three planes in service, and thereby lower costs in terms of manpower and maintenance. Serious work on SST designs started in the mid-1950s, when the first generation of supersonic fighter aircraft were entering service. In Britain and France, government-subsidized SST programs quickly settled on

5152-495: The aircraft to make more flights per day, providing a higher return on investment. Also, passengers generally prefer faster, shorter-duration trips to slower, longer-duration trips, so operating faster aircraft can give an airline a competitive advantage, even to the extent that many customers will willingly pay higher fares for the benefit of saving time and/or arriving sooner. However, Concorde's high noise levels around airports, time zone issues, and insufficient speed meant that only

5244-413: The airline desirability of SSTs, because, for very long-distance transportation (a couple of thousand kilometers), competition between different modes of transport is rather like a single-horse race: air transport does not have a significant competitor. The only competition is between the airline companies, and they would rather pay moderately to reduce cost and increase service quality than pay much more for

5336-408: The amount of cold low-pressure air they accelerate, using some of the energy normally used to accelerate hot air in the classic non-bypass turbojet. The ultimate expression of this design is the turboprop , where almost all of the jet thrust is used to power a very large fan – the propeller . The efficiency curve of the fan design means that the amount of bypass that maximizes overall engine efficiency

5428-561: The basis of Hawker Siddeley 's designs. By the early 1960s, the designs had progressed to the point where the go-ahead for production was given, but costs were so high that the Bristol Aeroplane Company and Sud Aviation eventually merged their efforts in 1962 to produce Concorde. In the early 1960s, various executives of US aerospace companies were telling the US public and Congress that there were no technical reasons an SST could not be produced. In April 1960, Burt C Monesmith,

5520-475: The border. AW's tender price was £1,333,940 compared with Queensland Railway's tender price of £1,130,142. In the mid-1920s the company clearly was trying to break into the booming Australian market, but was stymied by a preference for local companies. The Dominion of Newfoundland , an island country then mostly dependent on its fishery, had plenty of pulpwood but only one paper mill at Grand Falls-Windsor and one pulp mill at Bishop's Falls , both built in

5612-591: The capability of reducing the boom by about half. Even lengthening the vehicle (without significantly increasing the weight) would seem to reduce the boom intensity (see Sonic boom § Abatement ). When it comes to public policy, for example, the FAA prohibits commercial airplanes from flying at supersonic speeds above sovereign land governed by the United States because of the negative impact the sonic boom brings to humans and animal populations below. The aerodynamic design of

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5704-567: The construction of hydraulic engineering installations. Notable examples include: Between 1880 and 1925 they built a number of warships: They built oil tankers , including: Armstrong Whitworth built a few railway locomotives between 1847 and 1868, but it was not until 1919 that the company made a concerted effort to enter the railway market. Contracts were obtained for the construction and supply of steam and diesel locomotives to railway systems in Britain and overseas, including those detailed in

5796-742: The effort before it yields any marketable SST technology, causing potentially all investment to be lost. The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) estimates a SST would burn 5 to 7 times as much fuel per passenger. The ICCT shows that a New York to London supersonic flight would consume more than twice as much fuel per passenger than in subsonic business-class , six times as much as for economy class , and three times as much as subsonic business for Los Angeles to Sydney. Designers can either meet existing environmental standards with advanced technology or lobby policymakers to establish new standards for SSTs. If there were 2,000 SSTs in 2035, there would be 5,000 flights per day at 160 airports and

5888-461: The environment and sustainability, two growing concerns of the general public, including air travelers.) Investing in research and development work to design a new SST can be considered as an effort to push the speed limit of air transport. Generally, other than an urge for new technological achievement, the major driving force for such an effort is competitive pressure from other modes of transport. Competition between different service providers within

5980-451: The fan concept is difficult to use at supersonic speeds where the "proper" bypass is about 0.45, as opposed to 2.0 or higher for subsonic designs. For both of these reasons the SST designs were doomed by higher operational costs, and the AST programs vanished by the early 1980s. Concorde only sold to British Airways and Air France, with subsidized purchases that were to return 80% of the profits to

6072-441: The fuel of the [Concorde]" would essentially eliminate the hypothesized 1%–2% ozone-destruction-reaction-pathway. Despite the model-observation discrepancy surrounding the ozone concern, in the mid-1970s, six years after its first supersonic test flight, Concorde was now ready for service. The US political outcry was so high that New York banned the plane. This threatened the aircraft's economic prospects — it had been built with

6164-424: The government. In practice for almost all of the length of the arrangement, there was no profit to be shared. After Concorde was privatized, cost reduction measures (notably the closing of the metallurgical wing testing site which had done enough temperature cycles to validate the aircraft through to 2010) and ticket price raises led to substantial profits. Since Concorde stopped flying, it has been revealed that over

6256-535: The hydroelectric station helped to expand the forestry operations in the area. Some of the equipment used in the construction of the Panama Canal was shipped to Newfoundland. The pulp and paper mill in Corner Brook began operations in 1925. Overall, AW spent about £5M (equivalent to £360 million in 2023) on the development, which went significantly over the original budget and led to an overdraft, only to witness

6348-547: The increased space required for such a feature produced capacity problems that proved ultimately insurmountable. North American Aviation had an unusual approach to this problem with the XB-70 Valkyrie . By lowering the outer panels of the wings at high Mach numbers, they were able to take advantage of compression lift on the underside of the aircraft. This improved the L/D ratio by about 30%. Aircraft are surrounded by an air layer

6440-407: The intensity of the boom can be reduced, then this may make even very large designs of supersonic aircraft acceptable for overland flight. Research suggests that changes to the nose cone and tail can reduce the intensity of the sonic boom below that needed to cause complaints. During the original SST efforts in the 1960s, it was suggested that careful shaping of the fuselage of the aircraft could reduce

6532-422: The intensity of the sonic boom's shock waves that reach the ground. One design caused the shock waves to interfere with each other, greatly reducing the sonic boom. This was difficult to test at the time, but the increasing power of computer-aided design has since made this considerably easier. In 2003, a Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration aircraft was flown which proved the soundness of the design and demonstrated

6624-584: The largest non-articulated locomotives built in Great Britain, and were based on Alco drawings modified by AW and SAR engineers. They were a sensation in Australia. AW went on to build 20 large three-cylinder "Pacific" type locomotives for the Central Argentine Railway (F.C.C.A) in 1930, with Caprotti valve gear and modern boilers. They were the most powerful locomotives on the F.C.C.A. AW obtained

6716-617: The life of Concorde, the plane did prove profitable, at least to British Airways. Concorde operating costs over nearly 28 years of operation were approximately £1 billion, with revenues of £1.75 billion. On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed shortly after take-off with all 109 occupants and four on ground killed; the only fatal incident involving Concorde . Commercial service was suspended until November 2001, and Concorde aircraft were retired in 2003 after 27 years of commercial operations. The last regular passenger flights landed at London Heathrow on October 24, 2003, from New York ,

6808-504: The main Armstrong businesses to form Sir W.G. Armstrong & Company. EOC was then the armaments branch of W.G. Armstrong & Company and later of Armstrong Whitworth. Elswick Ordnance was a major arms developer before and during World War I . The ordnance and ammunition it manufactured for the British Government were stamped EOC, while guns made for export were usually marked "W.G. Armstrong". The 28 cm howitzer L/10 which played

6900-555: The manufacture of cars and trucks in 1902, and created an "aerial department" in 1913, which became the Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft subsidiary in 1920. In 1927, it merged with Vickers Limited to form Vickers-Armstrongs . The Armstrong Whitworth was manufactured from 1904, when the company decided to diversify to compensate for a fall in demand for artillery after the end of the Boer War . It took over construction of

6992-453: The practice. SST engines need a fairly high specific thrust (net thrust/airflow) during supersonic cruise, to minimize engine cross-sectional area and, thereby, nacelle drag. Unfortunately this implies a high jet velocity, which makes the engines noisy, particularly at low speeds/altitudes and at take-off. Therefore, a future SST might well benefit from a variable cycle engine , where the specific thrust (and therefore jet velocity and noise)

7084-556: The same size, with more than 300 operations per day at Dubai and London Heathrow , and over 100 in Los Angeles , Singapore , San Francisco , New York-JFK , Frankfurt , and Bangkok . Frequent sonic booms would be heard in Canada, Germany, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Romania, Turkey, and parts of the United States, up to 150–200 per day or one every five minutes. On August 21, 1961, a Douglas DC-8-43 (registration N9604Z) exceeded Mach 1 in

7176-569: The six. They were still theoretically available until 1907. According to Automotor in 1904, "Even the first Wilson-Pilcher car that made its appearance created quite a sensation in automobile circles at the time on account of its remarkably silent and smooth running, and of the almost total absence of vibration". The first Armstrong Whitworth car was the 28/36 of 1906 with a water-cooled, four-cylinder side-valve engine of 4.5 litres which unusually had "oversquare" dimensions of 120 mm (4.7 in) bore and 100 mm (3.9 in) stroke. Drive

7268-591: The temperature of which increases with aircraft speed. As a result the skin of the aircraft gets hotter with increasing supersonic speeds (kinetic heating from the high speed boundary layer ). Heat from the sun also raises the skin temperature. Heat transfers into the aircraft structure which also gets hotter. By the early 1960s many investigations in the United States, Britain and France had shown equilibrium skin temperatures varying from 130 degC at Mach 2.2 to 330 degC at Mach 3. Subsonic aircraft are usually made of aluminium. However aluminium, while being light and strong,

7360-724: The termination of flying by Concorde, there have been no SSTs in commercial service. However, several companies have proposed supersonic business jet designs. Small SSTs have less environmental impact and design capability improves with continuing research which is aimed at producing an acceptable aircraft. Supersonic airliners have been the objects of numerous recent ongoing design studies. Drawbacks and design challenges are excessive noise generation (at takeoff and due to sonic booms during flight), high development costs, expensive construction materials, high fuel consumption, extremely high emissions, and an increased cost per seat over subsonic airliners. However, despite these challenges, Concorde

7452-429: The thrust, leading to considerably greater fuel use. This effect is pronounced at speeds close to the speed of sound, as the aircraft is using twice the thrust to travel at about the same speed. The relative effect is reduced as the aircraft accelerates to higher speeds. Offsetting this increase in fuel use was the potential to greatly increase sortie rates of the aircraft, at least on medium and long-range flights where

7544-609: The two that are not are F-BVFD (cn 211), parked as a spare-parts source in 1982 and scrapped in 1994, and F-BTSC (cn 203), which crashed outside Paris on July 25, 2000, killing 100 passengers, 9 crew members, and 4 people on the ground. Armstrong-Whitworth Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. With headquarters in Elswick , Newcastle upon Tyne , Armstrong Whitworth built armaments , ships , locomotives , automobiles and aircraft . The company

7636-440: Was actually very successful, and was able to sustain a higher ticket price. Now that commercial SST aircraft have stopped flying, it has become clearer that Concorde made substantial profit for British Airways. Extreme jet velocities used during take-off caused Concorde and Tu-144s to produce significant take-off noise. Communities near the airport were affected by high engine noise levels, which prompted some regulators to disfavor

7728-440: Was claimed to have operated profitably. Throughout the 1950s an SST looked possible from a technical standpoint, but it was not clear if it could be made economically viable. Because of differences in lift generation, aircraft operating at supersonic speeds have approximately one-half the lift-to-drag ratio of subsonic aircraft. This implies that for any given required amount of lift, the aircraft will have to supply about twice

7820-452: Was founded by William Armstrong in 1847, becoming Armstrong Mitchell and then Armstrong Whitworth through mergers. In 1927, it merged with Vickers Limited to form Vickers-Armstrongs , with its automobile and aircraft interests purchased by J D Siddeley . In 1847, the engineer William George Armstrong founded the Elswick works at Newcastle, to produce hydraulic machinery, cranes and bridges, soon to be followed by artillery, notably

7912-766: Was later merged with similar work at the British Aircraft Corporation (originally the Bristol 223 ) to create the Concorde project in November 1962. After work had begun on designing Concorde, the Super Caravelle name was instead used on a lengthened version of the original Caravelle design, the SE-210B. The Super-Caravelle looks very much like a smaller version of Concorde. It used Concorde's unique ogive wing planform, and

8004-645: Was much less efficient than Concorde's turbojets in supersonic flight. The later TU-144D featured turbojet engines with comparable efficiency. These limitations meant that SST designs were not able to take advantage of the dramatic improvements in fuel economy that high bypass engines brought to the subsonic market, but they were already more efficient than their subsonic turbofan counterparts. Supersonic vehicle speeds demand narrower wing and fuselage designs, and are subject to greater stresses and temperatures. This leads to aeroelasticity problems, which require heavier structures to minimize unwanted flexing. SSTs also require

8096-466: Was originally created in 1859 to separate William Armstrong's armaments business from his other business interests, to avoid a conflict of interest as Armstrong was then Engineer of Rifled Ordnance for the War Office and the company's main customer was the British Government. Armstrong held no financial interest in the company until 1864 when he left Government service, and Elswick Ordnance was reunited with

8188-554: Was originally to be delivered in two versions, a longer-range transatlantic version similar to the Bristol 223 that was eventually delivered as Concorde, and a smaller version for shorter range routes similar to the Super-Caravelle. After consultations with prospective customers, the smaller design was dropped. General characteristics Performance Related development Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era Related lists Supersonic transport Following

8280-474: Was otherwise similar in shape and layout with the exception of the nose area, which was more conventional and only the outermost section over the radar "drooped" for visibility on takeoff and landing. In normal use it was designed to carry up to 109 passengers between 2,000 to 3,000 km (1,200 to 1,900 miles) at about Mach 2 . The size and range requirements were set to make the Super-Caravelle "perfect" for Air France 's European and African routes. Concorde

8372-510: Was the ice-breaking train ferries SS  Baikal in 1897 and SS  Angara in 1900, built to connect the Trans-Siberian Railway across Lake Baikal . The company built the first polar icebreaker in the world: Yermak was a Russian and later Soviet icebreaker, having a strengthened hull shaped to ride over and crush pack ice. In 1927, the defence and engineering businesses merged with those of Vickers Limited to create

8464-405: Was via a four-speed gearbox and shaft to the rear wheels. A larger car was listed for 1908 with a choice of either 5-litre 30 or 7.6-litre 40 models sharing a 127 mm (5.0 in) bore but with strokes of 100 mm (3.9 in) and 152 mm (6.0 in) respectively. The 40 was listed at £798 in bare chassis form for supplying to coachbuilders. These large cars were joined in 1909 by

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