Concorde could become the fastest commercial aircraft ever to take off thanks to its elongated fuselage design, delta wings and powerful engines.
Concorde ceased operations in 2003 partly due to fuel costs. Image: travelview
The Concorde passenger jet set a record for flying between New York and London in 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. This supersonic plane can fly twice as fast as the speed of sound. During its operation from 1976 to 2003, Concorde had a takeoff speed of 402 km/h and an average cruise speed of 2,173 km/h. Compared to it, the Boeing 737-700, one of the most popular aircraft today, has a takeoff speed of 278 km/h and a cruise speed of 828 km/h.
To reach such high speeds, Concorde engineers needed to design an aircraft that could handle both low speeds during takeoff and landing as well as supersonic cruise speeds, according to Tony Farina, assistant professor of engineering aviation at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
“Airplane wings designed to operate efficiently at supersonic speeds are often very poor at providing the lift needed at slow speeds during takeoff and landing,” Farina explains. To reduce drag, supersonic wings are often thinner and point more backward while standard wings are thicker to provide lift more easily. Providing lift is especially important because the faster a plane flies, the greater the drag it experiences, says Bob van der Linden, curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Fast Planes will encounter more resistance to lift.
One way Concorde engineers solved the problem was to design the plane with a more elaborate fuselage, including a narrow passenger compartment and an elongated conical tail. They also used triangular wings, a shape usually reserved for fighter aircraft. “The delta wing has good characteristics at high and low speeds,” van der Linden said.
The triangular wing design is effective in reducing drag on the aircraft. Due to the shape of its fuselage, Concorde jets need to land with their noses slanted higher than traditional commercial airliners. This makes it very difficult for the pilot to see ahead. Finally, engineers had to come up with a way to mechanically tilt the plane’s nose down. Today’s supersonic aircraft overcome this problem with technology that Concorde could not access in the 1960s. For example, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 supersonic aircraft uses an enhanced vision system (camera and screen). picture) to avoid the nose of the plane going down.
In addition to the elongated design, the Concorde jet also installed four turbojet engines, each providing 18.7 tons of thrust and consuming nearly 26,000 liters of fuel per hour. In comparison, the Boeing 737-800 model uses 3,200 liters of jet fuel per hour. Concorde also increased the thrust generated by the engine with a device called an afterburner that helped push the plane forward faster but fuel consumption also skyrocketed.
Ultimately, fuel costs were one of the reasons Concorde failed commercially, along with the accident of Air France flight 4590 in 2000.