Concept Study for a Mach 6 Transport Aircraft

A conceptual study is here presented and discusscd on the possibility to transport 200 passengers over a distance of about 7000km in a nominal point-to-point mission through the Atlantic (either London-New York or London-Rio) at a cruise Mach number of 6 and an altitude abont 30km. The aim of the study is not to design a specific airplane but to explore today's state of the art technology limits to realize such kind of concept, i.e. to identify if such a mission could succeed today. Because of the challenge the mission poses, its is being optimised with the major disciplines involved by means of Multi-Disciplinary Optimisation (MDO) tools as a way to realize an optimum integrated airframe/propulsion aircraft. The environmental impact is being analysed in terms of the resulting sonic boom. No experimental data but CFD results by means of independent assessments has been generated. The study indicates that today the available technology provides with sufficient maturity to accomplish with the mission in areas like aerodynamic and thermal resistance materials but in others like sonic boom mitigation it is required a deeper insight in the physics. Finally while the present investigation clear identify that complex designs involving large amount of variables from different disciplines could be only possible via MDO/MDA strategies, today such processes still suffer on lack of robustness of the involved tools.