Julian Moxon/PARIS
French researchers have successfully tested a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) at an equivalent speed of Mach 7.5 - the highest performance for such an engine to have achieved in Europe.
The engine ran for 10s, ending a five-year, Fr370 million ($62 million) programme involving France's aeronautics research agency, Onera, along with Aerospatiale, Dassault Aviation, SEP and Snecma. The Prepha (Programme de Recherche et Technologie sur la Propulsion Hypersonic Avancée) effort will now be wound up, signalling the end of French Government funding for hypersonics research.
Onera and its German counterpart, the DLR, will concentrate on a smaller, four-year programme known as the joint airbreathing propulsion for hypersonics application research (Japhar).
The two have agreed to spend about Fr20 million a year on refining the scramjet engine concept and preparing the groundwork for a future flight test vehicle.
Japhar programme chief Philippe Novelli says, however, that there are "no plans" to go into a flight test phase. "We are not ready yet, and the funding is so limited that I don't think it is likely to happen in the foreseeable future," he adds.
A scramjet has no rotating parts, operating by adding hydrogen to air that has been pre-compressed, the mixture burning supersonically to provide net thrust. The Prepha engine, tested at ground level at Onera's Chatillon facility near Paris, ran at 2,400K (2,127°C), which Novelli says is "unprecedented" in Europe.
Aerospatiale also took part in the Prepha programme and ran its own scramjet at Mach 7 in 1996.
Source: Flight International
