Briggs Aerospace Technologies
 

Hypersonic airliner engine programme 

The Aceson program funds the FXG Vancoollins program, with allotted funds of $800 million available for the construction of up to eight hypersonic power plant test beds. Using its existing power plants the FXG will be able to lift a test engine up to 150,000ft and Mach 7.4 and provide valuable test time at altitude and speed.

The engines will flight-tested by the four Vancoollins types, and categorised as test-beds during the pre-development phase. Successful test-beds will go on to trials against the other engines with the power plant deemed most capable of improvement under engineering development.

The program will use the specifications designed by Briggs for the hypersonic engine development programme, fielded to all the world’s aerospace power-plant manufacturers two years ago, as guidelines for performance requirements. Unfortunately, no existing aircraft engine company was capable of producing such an engine for this former contest, thus leaving the door open for Briggs to design the engine personally. 

Typical of Briggs; it does not just have one engine concept for prototype development into the FXG test phase - it has several. Adding further to Briggs concepts will be the work of the team of engineers will brainstorm other concepts.

Hypersonic aircraft engines differ broadly from the subsonic relatives. The power plants can recycle the highly compressed air forced into the jets intake by the extreme speed and use it as thrust. The pressures involved allow a certain amount of compression to take place, similar to a diesel engine. This can override combustibility problems of ignition of fuel at high speeds. Scramjet engines have very few parts lowerinng the cost and increasing reliability. High compression permits thrust increases via the ram effect.

The prospect of hypersonic airliners has been dreamt about for generations, for the virtues of speed and the possibilities a new power plant can bring. While cars have nearly halved average fuel consumption in the last decade, commercial aircraft engines have made very little improvement. A new engine will allow improvements to economy, safety and operating costs.


 
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