Professor Dame Ann Dowling of the Cambridge University engineering department is certainly an expert on aerodynamics, as amply evident from her Brabazon lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society this week in which she presented, along with colleague and propulsion specialist Tom Hynes, a radical concept for a blended wing body airliner powered by three-fan engines that would, they believe, slash aircraft noise to levels imperceptible beyond the perimeter of an urban airport.
But Prof Dowling's insight extends deep into commercial territory, too. Asked afterward what the critical technical challenges would be to realise the SAX-40 concept, she replied that while a great deal of development work needed doing, there appeared to be no particular technical hurdles.
Funding such a project, however, would be another matter altogether. Companies such as Airbus or Boeing - which has been involved, along with Rolls-Royce, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other partners in SAX-40 - are not really interested in starting such a venture any time soon. One reason, she notes, is that "nobody ever made any money introducing a new airframe". And, to succeed with an idea like SAX-40 would delight noise campaigners but would obsolete the existing fleet.
However, says Prof Dowling, when she outlines the concept to the Chinese, they are very interested, indeed.
But Prof Dowling's insight extends deep into commercial territory, too. Asked afterward what the critical technical challenges would be to realise the SAX-40 concept, she replied that while a great deal of development work needed doing, there appeared to be no particular technical hurdles.
Funding such a project, however, would be another matter altogether. Companies such as Airbus or Boeing - which has been involved, along with Rolls-Royce, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other partners in SAX-40 - are not really interested in starting such a venture any time soon. One reason, she notes, is that "nobody ever made any money introducing a new airframe". And, to succeed with an idea like SAX-40 would delight noise campaigners but would obsolete the existing fleet.
However, says Prof Dowling, when she outlines the concept to the Chinese, they are very interested, indeed.
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