Benefits of Advanced Propulsion Technology for the Advanced Supersonic Transport

Future supersonic transports will have to provide improvement in the areas of economics, range, and emissions relative to the present generation of supersonic transports, as well as meeting or improving upon FAR 36 noise goals. The significant simultaneous improvement in these areas represents a formidable technical and economic challenge in airplane and propulsion system design, and it is important to identify those propulsion system and advanced technology areas which show a high potential payoff for the next generation supersonic transport.

This paper will cover the promising propulsion systems including variable-cycle engine concepts for long-range supersonic commercial transport application. The benefits of applying advanced propulsion technology to solve the economic and environmental problems will be reviewed. The advanced propulsion technologies to be covered will be in the areas of structures, materials, cooling techniques, aerodynamics, variable engine geometry, jet noise suppressors, acoustic treatment, and low-emission burners. The results of applying the advanced propulsion technology will be presented in terms of improvement in overall system takeoff gross weight and return on investment.