Hypersonic propulsion revisited

I understand China is taboo as of late, however Beijing and some other places came together to create a hypersonic commercial engine. Link to study

It seems to be piggybacking off of a ramjet; While I am not an aeronautical engineer, I understand the physics involved in such speeds.
Ramjet inventor

According to the scientists, their newly developed hypersonic jet engine can reach speeds of up to Mach 16 – that’s a blistering 19,000 kilometers per hour (11,850 miles per hour) – and was stable when tested in a wind tunnel. Strap that onto a plane and you could reach anywhere in the world within two hours. Their results were published in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics.

Iflscience article

Surely this advancement would be amazing; but can they get past the potentially dangerous shortcomings?

a reply to: SeektoUnderstand

I apologize if this was already posted, did a search and found nothing on the study.

a reply to: SeektoUnderstand

As we've found out many times, stable in the wind tunnel, and working on an aircraft are very very far apart. It would be great to see this flying, but between the materials science, and just being able to make it work on an aircraft, it's going to be awhile.

At those speeds it’s probably not turning, so plot the path & fire a little birdshot in the general vicinity.

What does a BB sized chunk of metal do to an airframe at Mach 16?

a reply to: PhantomTwo

At those speeds they're flying higher than an SR-71, so good luck with that.

Itll be very interesting to see what they come out with and even more interesting to hear of the engineering breakthroughs theyve made building it.

They'll need those breakthroughs to achieve the type of speeds they're speaking of.

a reply to: SeektoUnderstand

And to think WE could have had a viable hypersonic Concord replacement as early as the 1980's if only the UK Government had not been filled with short sighted self interested idiot's.


Have a guess who bought it when we did not use it?.

It was not perfect but it would have been both hypersonic and also capable of delivering payloads into low orbit as well as a possible passenger version.


Of course Hypersonic may be very old hat to the Black Budget arm of the US aerospace development, every hear of the Aurora.
Capable of at least mach 5 the Aurora was rumoured to be flying as far back as the late 80's.

Or, the Chinese scientists could just be lying. I’ve heard they do that a lot in China. a reply to: LABTECH767

a reply to: LABTECH767

Aurora was never an actual aircraft, contrary to internet BS. Someone saw it in the classified budget, added things up and came up with a mythical hypersonic aircraft. The one mention doesn't add up to it being any kind of aircraft, but it does line up with the classified spending for the B-2 redesign that occurred around that time.

a reply to: SonofaSkunk

Even if they aren't, it's a huge leap from "this works in our wind tunnel" to "we're flying this on a reusable aircraft".

Its why Rc planes dont fly the same as full size aircraft..

originally posted by: SeektoUnderstand
I understand China is taboo as of late, however Beijing and some other places came together to create a hypersonic commercial engine. Link to study

It seems to be piggybacking off of a ramjet; While I am not an aeronautical engineer, I understand the physics involved in such speeds.
Ramjet inventor

According to the scientists, their newly developed hypersonic jet engine can reach speeds of up to Mach 16 – that’s a blistering 19,000 kilometers per hour (11,850 miles per hour) – and was stable when tested in a wind tunnel. Strap that onto a plane and you could reach anywhere in the world within two hours. Their results were published in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics.

Iflscience article

Surely this advancement would be amazing; but can they get past the potentially dangerous shortcomings?

I think this could only happen at a very high elevation, I imagine the air friction at mach 16 just melts stuff.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I know that you are correct and thank you for the far more informed correction but you know there were those donut's on a rope contrails so they may have been flying or testing something over there - or maybe not?, I know that in certain conditions even an ordinary contrail can take on that chain of blob's affect but it was quite common in places were believers in the Aurora being a reality claimed it flew over and looked more like ring's of exhaust condensate around an otherwise linear trail in the sky (like when smokers make a smoke ring but around a contiguous trail) so many of those folk's took to thinking it may be a pulsed detonation engine similar to the ancient V2 but of course much more modern, that said no one ever reported a buzzing sound which would have been very typical of such a propulsion system and so?, but they did report sonic boom in relation to some of these odd looking contrail's (Which probably meant they were simply hypersonic jets if anything).

That said I HAVE seen contrails left by commercial jets coming in to land and take off at both Manchester international and John Moors (Speke) airports over here in the UK, I live more or less between them so plenty of flight path's cross over my home and those were nothing more mysterious than Boeing and Airbus passenger planes which of course are subsonic.

You definitely know far more about this subject than I ever shall, thank you.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Pulse Detonation Engines both leave a very distinct sound that no one ever reported hearing, and are very inefficient for larger platforms. They work great for something like a cruise missile, or small UAV, but not so much for something large, like an aircraft. You might get about Mach 2, MAYBE 3 out of one, but not much faster than that. You're far better off with an RBCC, or if you can finally crack it, a TBCC. Even the J58 was a better engine than a PDE. They have tested small platforms in the past, to try to crack the PDE wall, but with very little luck. There have been some very interesting, and VERY black advances in engines that I'd love to see come to light, but aliens will be here first.