The Concorde

Chirag Kothari 10114014

-A Technological Marvel

Some eye catchy facts..• First supersonic passenger airliner or SST(SuperSonic

Transport)• Had a cruise speed of Mach 2.04 and cruise altitude of

60,000 feet.(Boeing 747- Mach 0.85 & 35,000 ft)• One of the 2 SSTs to enter commercial service ( other

being Tupolev Tu-114)• Entered commercial service in 1969 , flew for 27 years and

Finally retired in 2003.• Jointly developed by England and France under an Anglo-

French treaty.• Till now only 20 concordes have been built.

Origins• In late 1950s , Americans ,French, British and the Soviets were all

interested in making supersonic jets.• Britain’s Bristol company and French Sud Aviation were working on type

233 and Super-Caravelle resp.

• Concorde 001 took off on a test flight on March 2, 1969 and the first supersonic flight followed on October 11

Unique Features of Concorde

• Any Aircraft that approaches speed of sound (343 m/s) an air pressure builds up in front like a wall, so as to pass through it an aircraft’s design must be streamlined.

Streamlined design :-1. Needle like fuselage.2. Swept-back delta wing 3. Movable nose.4. Vertical tail design

• The long narrow shape of concorde helps it to reduce the drag on the plane as it moves through the air.

Unique Features of Concorde

• The wings have Triangular delta wing design which solve the following purpose:

1. Reduce the drag by being thin and Swept-back.2. Provides sufficient lift while take-off at subsonic speeds.3. Provides stability during the flight so that no horizontal stabilizers are needed on the tail.

Unique Features of Concorde • Droop Nose: Special kind of nose that can be drooped down not

obstructing the pilot's view during taxi, takeoff, and landing operations and pulled up for being streamlined to reduce drag and achieve optimum

aerodynamic efficiency. Also, a visor to protect

windshield the windshield.

• For generating the enormous amount of thrust needed , concorde uses 4 Rolles Royce Olympus turbo Jet engines.

• Each engine produces 18.7 tons (180 kN) of thrust and all four engines together use up around 26,000 litres of fuel per hour.

Unique Features of Concorde

Heating Issues

• Beside engines, the hottest part of the structure of any supersonic aircraft is the nose.

• Engineers wanted to use aluminium throughout the aircraft, due to its familiarity, cost and ease of construction. The highest temperature that aluminium could sustain over the life of the aircraft was 127 °C, which limited the top speed to Mach 2.02.

• The body of the plane also gets heated up to very high temperatures (127 C on nose end to 91 C on tail end )

• To combat this , a white paint of very high reflectivity is used that is twice as high in reflection as paints used in normal jets.

Heating Issues

Structural Issues

• Due to the high speeds at which Concorde travelled, large forces were applied to the aircraft structure during banks and turns.

• This caused twisting and the distortion of the aircraft’s structure

• This was resolved by the neutralisation with the use of elevons at high speeds. Additionally, the narrow fuselage meant that the aircraft flexed more, particularly during takeoff.

Brakes and Undercarriage

• Due to a high average takeoff speed of 250 miles per hour (400 km/h), Concorde needed upgraded brakes.

• The brakes, developed by Dunlop, were the first carbon-based brakes used on an airliner. They could bring Concorde, weighing up to 185 tons (188 tonnes) and travelling at 190 miles per hour (310 km/h), to a stop from an aborted takeoff within one mile (1600 m).

The Paris Crash

The Paris Crash• Took place on Tuesday, 25th July 2000 • The very first fatal accident involving Concorde with

Concorde 203, F-BTSC out bound from Paris to New York.

• Crashed 60 seconds after take off after suffering tyre blow which was due to a titanium strip falling from another flight which took off a few minutes earlier , resulting a fuel tank to rupture.

• This started a sequence of events that caused a fire which eventually lead to 2 engines failing and the aircraft crashing.

The Paris Crash

• All 109 people (100 passengers and 9 crew) on board including 4 people in a local hotel on the ground got

killed.• Prior to the accident, Concorde had been arguably

the safest operational passenger airliner in the world in terms of passenger deaths-per-kilometres travelled with zero, but with a history of tyre explosions 60 times higher than subsonic jets

Retirement…Retirement

Retirement• On April 10, 2003 British Airways and Air France

simultaneously announced that they would retire the Concorde later that year.

• 3 Major reasons cited were: 1. Low passenger count following the July 25, 2000 crash 2. The slump in air travel following 9/11, and 3. Rising maintenance costs.

• But, it is still and will always be celebrated for being - the only profit making Supersonic Passenger Jet to ever to go into regular revenue service.

Thank You