Hypersonic Vehicles/Scramjets

[Godless-Kafir]

 

[sathya]

Air-breathing propulsion system (ABPS) for reusable launch vehicle (RLV)

Low-cost air-breathing propulsion system rocket engine test in March

The country's first air-breathing propulsion system (ABPS) will be tested in March in Kerala. The air-breathing technology, still in its early stages of development, will engine the ambitious reusable launch vehicle (RLV) programme.

The RLV programme aims at cutting down space budgets by using the same vehicle for subsequent launches. The RLV, sources said, would bring down the launch cost by 1/10 of the existing expenses.

At present, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) incurs between Rs 80 crore and Rs 110 crore for its workhorse, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Together with the cost of the satellite, each launch costs the space agency anything above Rs 500 crore. Similarly, the Geo-synchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV) costs in the range of Rs 175 crore-230 crore.

"Apart from bringing down the cost, the reusable concept also reduces weight of the rocket. This would help us launch heavier or multiple objects and attract other nations looking for cheaper launch options to India," sources said. At present, India charges about $20,000/kg to $24,000/kg for offering satellite launches. Isro would be able to bring this cost down considerably once the RLV technology is proven.

Being developed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), the air-breathing system, as its name denotes, uses atmospheric air as oxidizer. In short, rockets will have to only carry the propellant on board instead of tanking fuel and oxidizer adding to the total weight.

Isro is planning to place the ABPS on a sounding rocket in Rohini series, RH 560, for the test flight. The ABPS will suck atmospheric air into its system during the flight on RH 560. Thus, by the time the RLV leaves earth's atmosphere, its engine (or ABPS) would have filled itself with enough oxygen that would power its flight to the designated orbit. The RLV will then re-enter earth's atmosphere and land either like a conventional aircraft or with the help of a parachute. "After an initial test flight, it will be used in RLV," VSSC director P S Veeraraghavan told TOI.

The development of advanced ABPS is still in nascent stages in many countries including Australia, Japan and China, except the US which had carried out an in-flight experiment of supersonic combustion, said scientists at VSSC. "Our RLV would take another year before it is test flown," said VSSC associate director and head of technology transfer group John P Zachariah.

Low-cost rocket engine test in March - The Times of India

 

[roma]

re: Air-breathing propulsion system (ABPS) for reusable launch vehicle (RLV)

Low-cost air-breathing propulsion system rocket engine test in March

The country's first air-breathing propulsion system (ABPS) will be tested in March in Kerala.

The development of advanced ABPS is still in nascent stages in many countries including Australia, Japan and China, except the US which had carried out an in-flight experiment of supersonic combustion, said scientists at VSSC. "Our RLV would take another year before it is test flown," said VSSC associate director and head of technology transfer group John P Zachariah.

so Mallu John Zachariah is gonna use Mallu-"dominated" ISRO to launch RLV in Mallu-land Kerala ??

GO MALLU GO !!

 

[LurkerBaba]

Re: Air-breathing propulsion system (ABPS) for reusable launch vehicle (RLV)

sathya

Please add the source when posting an article

 

[anoop_mig25]

Re: Air-breathing propulsion system (ABPS) for reusable launch vehicle (RLV)

lets hope and pray for its success

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Oman Tribune - the edge of knowledge

DRDO to test indigenous scram jet engine next year

NEW DELHI Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will test the indigenously developed scram jet engine next year, according to DRDO chief VK Saraswat.

"We have demonstrated the performance of a scram jet engine operating at Mach six speed (six times the speed of sound)," he said in an interview given to Doordarshan.

Theoretical projections place the top speed of a scramjet between Mach 12 (15,000 kmph) and Mach 24 (29,000 kmph), according to Wikipedia.

The fastest air-breathing aircraft is a SCRAM jet design, the NASA X-43A, which reached Mach 9.8. For comparison, the second fastest air-breathing aircraft, the manned SR-71 Blackbird, has a cruising speed of Mach 3.2.

After the successful launch of Agni-5 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), India is all set to develop reusable rockets which will combine the technologies of both ballistic and cruise missiles.

On the range of Agni-5 missile, which was successfully test-fired recently off Odisha coast, he said with moderate modifications, "it can be extended to any range which is of our interest."

On the technological capability available with the agency, he said: "DRDO has built the necessary technologies, production infrastructure and design capability for developing a booster or a sustainer.

"We have the capability to develop a re-entry nose cone which can withstand higher temperature and velocity."

Reacting to reports that India does not possess sufficient indigenous technology for missile guidance systems, Saraswat said Agni-5 has used a completely indigenous and high precision missile guidance system with "0.001 degrees of per hour accuracy."

On criticism that DRDO sometimes does not live up to expectations, he said the agency was as good as its counterparts in advanced countries.

"The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), F-18 and Eurofighter took similar number of years and cost wise they were three times more than what we have put in our LCA," he said.

On the development of the Kaveri engine, Saraswat said it has performed well and was, "flown on an IL-76 aircraft in Russia for 55 hours of successful flight. We are going to upgrade it so that it can be used in India's LCA Mark-II and future systems."

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India Plans Hypersonic Flight Test | Parabolic Arc

India Plans Hypersonic Flight Test

India is planning to conduct the first flight trial of its Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) in the next 12 to 18 months, according to Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) officials.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

IN FOCUS - British engineers 'crack secret of reusable spaceplane'

British engineers 'crack secret of reusable spaceplane

The dream of airline-style orbital flight operations has come a step closer to reality with a successful demonstration of the critical technology behind a radical air-breathing rocket engine concept.

After years of work that has consumed some £250 million ($400 million), Oxford-based Reaction Engines has declared success in its attempt to devise a pre-cooler that can liquidise oxygen from intake air, before mixing it with tanked liquid hydrogen to generate thrust like a normal rocket engine.

A spaceplane powered by such engines would leave a runway under rocket power and liquidise its own oxygen until reaching Mach 5.5 at 26km (16 miles) altitude, when tanked liquid oxygen would take over for the journey to low-Earth orbit.

Reaction Engines is now seeking another £250 million from investors to develop a demonstrator of its Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) powerplant concept.


Reaction Engines

Could we soon be travelling from London to Sydney in 4 hours?

Founder Alan Bond, whose vision of the air-breathing rocket engine goes back 30 years to his work on British spaceplane concepts including HOTOL - which bears much resemblance to Reaction's current Skylon concept - reckons that with parallel airframe development a spaceplane with a 200-trip lifespan could be flying by 2020 and operational by 2030.

The critical technology is the pre-cooler, essentially a radiator made of many hundreds of kilometres of 1mm tubing capable of cooling the 1,000ËšC (1,832ËšF) M5 air to a nearly-cryogenic -150ËšC. Reaction Engines has also mastered a process to actually manufacture such a structure which, in its full-scale form, will have a million brazed joints and must be leak-free.

But, according to technical director Richard Varvill, the really "magic" piece of the puzzle is the ability to prevent the cooler from being completely closed by frost, which it would do in seconds without a technique which, he stresses, is being kept absolutely secret. Steady-state tests lasting more than 10min have shown the cooler to work perfectly, he says.

The European Space Agency is backing Reaction's claims, having supported its test programme with a small amount of funding and what Reaction describes as a highly significant amount of expertise. While stressing there is a very long engineering road to any operational system, ESA's head of propulsion engineering Mark Ford is adamant the SABRE engine is a "potentially disruptive" technology.

Reusable launch systems under development, he says, are all based on traditional rocket engines, and ESA sees little or no chance of success going down that route. With SABRE, however, "one of the main obstacles to reusability has been removed", he says.

What makes SABRE so potentially valuable is the fact it needs to carry only a fraction of the liquid oxygen from the ground needed for a trip to space. As Ford puts it, if we can liquidise our oxidiser from the air, we would be "mad" not to.

And, he adds, a SABRE engine could be wing-mounted as in the Skylon concept, which would allow quick and easy swap-out of powerplants to enable an airline-style maintenance regime. One of the reasons NASA's Space Shuttle proved to be so slow and expensive to turn around between trips was the hugely time-consuming task of maintaining its internal main engines.

SABRE engine technology could also power an aircraft to multi-Mach atmospheric cruise, potentially realising London-Sydney travel times of 4h. The intercooler technology might, adds former Rolls-Royce engineer Varvill, also transform more normal sub-Mach aero engines by recovering heat from the exhaust to put "free" energy back to the combustion chamber.

Such recuperative architectures are used in electricity generation plants and, reckons Varvill, could cut aero engine fuel burn by 5-10%.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Fast20XX research project - ideas for travelling at hypersonic speed

Fast20XX-ideas for travelling at hypersonic speed

The vision is enticing - board in Europe, sit back, and disembark 90 minutes later on the other side of the world, in Australia. But before the SpaceLiner, which is being developed by the Institute of Space Systems at the German Aerospace Center, can fly a route like this for the first time, new technologies still have to be tested and basic requirements defined.

Scientists from Germany, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Sweden have been carrying out research for the Fast20XX (Future high-Altitude high-Speed Transport) project, which is supported by the EU, for three years.

The results of the project, which has now been concluded, will influence the future design of the DLR SpaceLiner and the Aerospace Innovation GmbH ALPHA aircraft.

Flying like a space shuttle
The concept already exists; the DLR SpaceLiner is intended to stand upright like a space shuttle before launch and take off on its journey using rocket engines. After the initial burn, the reusable booster stage will separate from the orbiter, in which there will be a capsule with a capacity of 50 passengers. The glide phase will start eight minutes later, at 20 times the speed of sound.

The landing, around 80 minutes later, will take place on a normal runway like a conventional aircraft. It is a project for which there are no existing examples: "We are having to define the dimensions ourselves and use computer models of the SpaceLiner to feel our way," says DLR project coordinator Martin Sippel.

"The SpaceLiner is a challenge in terms of both technology and operations." So it is that the 17 partners in the Fast20XX research project have not been designing an aircraft, but rather investigating important interdisciplinary aspects for an aircraft capable of air and space travel.

Multiple DLR institutes have been involved in the project; besides the Institute of Space Systems, the Institute of Aerospace Medicine, the Institute of Structures and Design and the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology have also contributed digital and experimental results.

Computer simulations
One important issue is cooling the space plane during flight. After the drive phase, the SpaceLiner glides, during which time it encounters friction from Earth's atmosphere. At this stage, temperatures can reach up to 1800 degrees Celsius. The solution is active cooling on the aircraft nose and the leading edges of the wings. The idea is that water will escape from porous ceramic components and provide cooling as it evaporates.

The DLR Institute of Structures and Design is developing and manufacturing suitable ceramics for this transpiration cooling and is simulating their flow on computers. Following work on Fast20XX with tests in the plasma wind tunnel at the DLR site in Cologne, the engineers are now certain that active cooling is possible using porous ceramic materials.

The scientists are also researching the airflow around the aircraft itself and are using computer programmes to model this.

"The SpaceLiner will reach a flight altitude where atmospheric pressure is very low, so the flow phenomena change," explains Sippel. Models were tested in a special wind tunnel at the DLR site in Gottingen and compared with digital simulations from Italian partner organisation CIRA.

The agreement between the measurements and the simulations was sufficiently high that the simulations are being used to support the future design of the space plane.

Basic requirements for the high-speed aircraft
Besides researching the aerodynamics, materials and cooling, projects such as the SpaceLiner require numerous other types of research as well. For example, is flight at hypersonic speed even tolerable for the passengers? The Institute of Aerospace Medicine has given a green light. What approval requirements do the constructors of high-speed aircraft face?

To what extent will the environment be affected - even though the SpaceLiner will only emit water as it flies? The 17 partners in the Fast20XX research project are also collating data and researching these topics.

"Moreover, we have also worked out the situations in which a flight will need to be aborted and how to respond to situations such as an engine failure," says Sippel. It is already clear that the SpaceLiner can only be launched far from inhabited areas - and that high-speed flight must take place at high altitudes in order to protect inhabited regions from sonic booms.

Many questions are still unanswered; how can the rocket engine be made to operate reliably and safely? What should the tank pressurisation system look like? How must the thermal protection system for the entire aircraft be designed? And what requirements must the passenger cabin meet, since it will also act as a rescue capsule in the event of an emergency? Then, the network of rescue centres on the ground would have to function flawlessly.

From space tourism to scheduled flights
For Martin Sippel, a first step on the road to transportation for long haul flights is Project ALPHA by Aerospace Innovation GmbH. This space plane, which was also researched in Fast20XX, is intended to be launched from an Airbus A330 at an altitude of 14 kilometres with two passengers and one pilot, and then reach an altitude of 100 kilometres.

"Space tourism like this might be the first step and be achieved this decade - it is a test to see whether the market for such space vehicles exists," explains the DLR researcher. The SpaceLiner is not intended for short flights in space, but for transporting passengers and goods in point-to-point travel over large intercontinental distances, and is to be principally privately financed, as normal flight is today.

This is a long-term vision, according to Sippel, that will not start to happen before 2050. "We want to acquire a new, big market for spaceflight technology and so significantly reduce the costs for transporting satellites into space."

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Competition for hypersonic vehicles resumes

Competition for hypersonic vehicles resumes

The Russian Defence Ministry will start testing advanced hypersonic missiles in the coming summer. At present, Russia is conducting research in several areas of developing hypersonic technology, but it's unclear which will be successful.

The work on hypersonic vehicles conducted by the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the Cold War was suspended after it was ended. But it has restarted now. Both countries are aimed at creating guided means of destruction which should be an alternative to intercontinental ballistic missiles. This task was set at the dawn of the hypersonic technology.

At present, the main task is to develop an engine capable of giving the vehicle necessary speed. The manoeuvering warheads are not facing this problem because the booster gives them the necessary speed. The present task is to develop a hypersonic reusable vehicle.

This task is being solved in the U.S. where an experimental vehicle X-27 has been developed. Its testing started in 2010. At present, it is making the third orbital flight started in December 2012.

It will continue for several months. The testing is aimed at developing a hypersonic weapon carrier capable of manoeuvering in the orbit and entering the atmosphere to launch attacks on anywhere in the world.

But many problems, such as the designing of the vehicle, developing navigation and communication systems, are yet to be solved to achieve this goal. The traditional radio communication and radio navigation are not working during flights at hypersonic speeds in the atmosphere.

Russian developments of hypersonic vehicles are moving in several directions.

Russian specialists have achieved great success in developing manoeuvering warheads. Such warheads that are heavier and bigger than ordinary ones are capable of manoeuvering in the atmosphere. This excludes their interception by the existing and promising anti-missile defence systems.

A hypersonic missile for the Russian Navy will be developed in the next few years. The Tsirkon anti-ship system should be based on the hypersonic missile that is being developed by Russia and India on the basis of the Bramos missile.

The Russian Air Force is interested in such missiles but the speed of the missiles for it should be more than ten times the speed of sound.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Spaceplane air cooling technology 'could revolutionise aero engines'

The technology behind a British attempt to develop an air-breathing rocket engine capable of powering a runway take-off and landing reusable spaceplane could also drive a revolution in the much more ordinary world of subsonic airliners.

Reaction Engine's SABRE rocket engine relies on an exotic heat exchanger capable of cooling intake air - from as much as 1,000ËšC (1,832ËšF) at Mach 5.5 to an almost-cryogenic -150ËšC - to provide the near-liquid oxygen required to provide rocket thrust when mixed with tanked liquid hydrogen.

The technology, formally "signed off" by the European Space Agency in November as viable, will now be the subject of a £250 million ($400 million) investment drive, which Reaction Engines hopes will raise funds to develop a demonstrator.

However, while the company's focus will be on its SABRE concept, Reaction Engines believes its cooling technology, which transfers heat from the air to tanked liquid hydrogen fuel by running it over a huge network of 1mm tubing, could augment a "standard" aero gas turbine in two ways.

Reaction Engines technical director Richard Varvill says a SABRE-style heat exchanger could feed cool air to compressor blades. In current gas turbines, the hot-section blades are running at temperatures above the melting point of the metals they are made from, and have to be cooled by pumping less-hot air through internal holes, the formation of which greatly complicates blade manufacture. Better cooling with colder air may permit even hotter combustion.

Another technique would be to use a heat exchanger to take heat from the exhaust and feed it back into the combustion chamber, thereby getting work from energy that would otherwise be wasted.

Varvill reckons these two approaches could slash fuel burn by 5-10%, a massive improvement. As Varvill notes, waste-heat recuperation is widely used in power station gas turbines, where weight and space considerations clearly do not apply as they do in aircraft. Indeed, recuperation is used in aero-derivative gas turbines, including Rolls-Royce's WR-21, a 25MW unit widely used in ships and derived from the RB211, the first three-spool engine which led to the Trent family.

None of this will happen quickly for aircraft, stresses Varvill, as it would require a new engine architecture rather than any bolt-on approach. But, he notes, aero engine makers have not abandoned hope of bringing in recuperation at some point.

 

[dealwithit]

India hypersonic test flight HSTDV

Forty kilometers in 20 seconds! The time taken to eat a biscuit. Well, that's the primary mission objective scientists at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) in Hyderabad are aiming for, probably as a first step towards unleashing a futuristic hypersonic cruise missile. And, when Santa rings the X'Mas bell in 2014, we would have known the fate of this tech-cocktail currently being measured and mixed to perfection by a group of brainy boys of Indian defence.
The scientists have already conceptualized a Hypersonic Test Demonstration Vehicle (HSTDV) for an autonomous flight of a scramjet-integrated (combustion inside the engine occurs at 1.2 km/sec) hypersonic air-breathing vehicle for a short duration of about 20 seconds.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

DRDO working on Scramjet aircraft, says Saraswat - The New Indian Express



DRDO working on scramjet aircraft.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

DRDO working on Scramjet aircraft, says Saraswat - The New Indian Express


DRDO working on scramjet aircraft.

Scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) are working on Scramjet-powered aircraft which can travel from New Delhi to New York in one hour, Vijay Kumar Saraswat, scientific advisor to the Union Minister of Defence and director-general of DRDO, has said.

Saraswat was conferred with the Doctorate in Science by Koneru Lakshmaiah University at its second convocation held here on Monday.

We should believe him. He has his doctorate now.

Are we yet awaiting this test? Article is exactly one year old today:

http://www.janes.com/article/13114/india-s-drdo-preparing-for-hypersonic-test

 

[SajeevJino]

The only Hypersonic Missile is our Shaurya tested more than 2 times in the Past

Shaurya (missile) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shaurya can reach a velocity of Mach 7.5 even at low altitudes

But Still I have doubts Is this Missile is Ballistic Missile or Hypersonic Cruise Missile and any Relation b/w Sahuriya and K 15

 

[Defenceindia2010]

''MONSTER ROCKET'', by NDTV.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

 

[Sridhar]

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is confident that HSTDV, which has already achieved 6.5 Mach, will achieve its aim of scramjet flight for 20 seconds.

Mach is commonly used to represent the speed of an object when it is travelling close to or above the speed of sound.

V.G. Sekaran, director general (missiles and strategic systems), DRDO, told reporters here Wednesday they have already achieved some milestones in terms of engine development.

"HSTDV would give us a lead in hypersonic vehicle design, scramjet, material technology and how to manage environment which is peculiar to hypersonic flying engines," he said.

He said work on the wind tunnel required for tests had started and it would be ready in one-and-half years. He was confident this would reduce the development cycle in hypersonic programme.

Issues related to a long term hypersonic programme in the country will be discussed at a two-day international symposium beginning here Thursday.

The sixth symposium on "Applied aerodynamics and design of aerospace vehicles" will discuss the roadmap for some of the futuristic hypersonic programmes.

Tests underway for Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle | Business Standard

 

[LETHALFORCE]

http://www.combustioninstitute-indiansection.com/pdf/SCRAMJET COMBUSTOR DEVELOPMENT.pdf


HSTDV-Scramjet combustor development

 

[LETHALFORCE]

A new conceptual configuration for air-breathing hypersonic airplanes