NASA recently completed wind tunnel testing of its new "silent" supersonic jet "Concorde's Son" miniature model, which replaced the Concorde's huge sonic boom with a softer "bang" sound. It is reported that NASA will conduct a full-size "Son of Concorde" test later this year.
The "Sons of Concorde" scaled-down model was tested inside the Supersonic Wind Tunnel.
Engineers reportedly tested a small-scale model inside an 8-foot by 6-foot "supersonic wind tunnel" at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
The model was tested for weeks in the tunnel, and the resulting shock wave was captured by a special Schlieren camera.
Schlieren cameras are used to capture the flow of fluids of different densities. The images captured by the camera provided engineers with a visualization of the shock waves and their position as the air passed through the model.
Schlieren's camera captured the shock waves generated by the "Sons of Concorde" model in the wind tunnel.
Dubbed the Son of Concorde, the full-size X-59QueSST supersonic aircraft is still built by NASA and Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works in Palmdale, Calif..
If approved for commercial travel, the X-59QueSST could fly from London to New York in as little as 3 hours without making the same loud sonic boom as the Concorde jet did in its 27-year history.
When an object is flying in the air at a speed faster than the speed of sound, the resulting shock waves merge together before reaching the ground, and a sonic boom occurs. Sonic booms produce huge sound energy of about 110 decibels, like the sound of an explosion or thunder.
Concorde was the world's first supersonic airliner.
Concorde was the world's first supersonic airliner. Whenever concorde broke through the sound barrier, the loud roar was often described by the public as "disturbing," which ultimately limited the airliner's passenger flight over the Atlantic Ocean from 1976 onwards, and was grounded in October 2003.
Since then, no government or manufacturer has been able to build supersonic commercial aircraft.
The X-59's engine was deliberately designed to be in the upper part of the aircraft, producing only a quieter "bang" sound when it was cruising at Mach 1.4 or 1,074 miles per hour.
The engine of the X-59 was deliberately designed in the upper part of the aircraft.
The full-size "Sons of Concorde" was 94 feet long and had a wingspan of 29.5 feet when fully built.
Its 30-foot-long nose was also specifically designed to minimize the shock waves triggered by the movement of air particles as the aircraft travels at speeds above the speed of sound (767 miles per hour).
John Walter, principal investigator of the X-59 Sonic Boom Wind Tunnel Test, said the test proved that "not only do we have quieter aircraft designs, but we also have the exact tools we need to predict future aircraft noise."
NASA and Lockheed Martin are currently completing the construction of the X-59 at the Skunk Factory in California.
NASA and Lockheed Martin are currently currently completing the construction of the X-59 at the Skunk Plant in California. Later this year, the two partners will begin preliminary flight tests to prove their "airworthiness."
After flight tests, NASA will verify that the aircraft's silent supersonic technology meets design requirements during flight, and then transition to a "community flyby phase" to detect how residents react to the sound the aircraft produces during supersonic flight.
Text/Nandu reporter Chen Lin