This month, the Chinese industry magazine Acta Aeronautica Sinica published the first details of the future supersonic passenger airliner project C949 by the state-owned Chinese aircraft manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC). The C949 aircraft will fly slightly slower than the legendary Concordes, but will do so much more quietly, which greatly hampered the operation of the first supersonic airliners. However, the C949 is still to come.
Image source: COMAC
According to COMAC’s plans, the C949 supersonic airliner should be in service by 2049. It is planned as a gift for the centennial of the Communist Party of China. But it is not just a gift for the holiday. It is obvious that the development and production of a civilian aircraft for flights at speeds significantly higher than the speed of sound takes a lot of time and money.
At the same time, the world is reviving interest in civil flights at supersonic speed. The history of the Concordes and Tu-144 may be revived at a new technological level, taking into account all the shortcomings made during its first turn. In particular, new projects of supersonic civil aircraft from the NASA X-59 to the Boom Supersonic and others, including the Chinese COMAC C949, are a struggle to reduce noise levels during flight and save fuel.
The COMAC C949’s lines are designed to dampen shock waves when breaking the sound barrier and noise from flying at supersonic speeds. It’s the same elongated nose and special profile of the middle section that all similar projects have in common. In addition, AI should be connected to the aircraft’s control in the air to quickly respond to “extreme nonlinearity of aerodynamics and compensate for the loss of stability under lateral impact.” For example, the COMAC C949 will have seven fuel tanks, 42 tons of fuel, between which the fuel will be constantly redistributed to maintain a given center of gravity.
The COMAC C949 will be impossible, say the designers, unless they can create engines optimized for flight at different speeds. In cruising mode, the airliner will be able to accelerate to Mach 1.6, and in economy mode at an altitude of 16 km, it will accelerate to Mach 1.7. Concordes accelerated to a speed of about Mach 2. The noise from the flight of the COMAC C949 will be 20 times less than from the Concordes, the company’s engineers believe. This will allow the COMAC C949 to fly over populated areas, which was prohibited for the Concordes.
With a 50% longer range than its predecessors, the COMAC C949 will be able to fly from Shanghai to Los Angeles in 5 hours without a stopover. The business cabin of the aircraft will be able to accommodate 28 to 48 passengers. According to analysts, 45 million passengers a year (1% of the total air passenger flow) will need such high-speed aviation. Civil supersonic aviation will be in demand, but whether there will be aircraft for it remains an open question.