The key component of a British hypersonic, air-breathing rocket engine with the potential to fly aircraft and space vehicles at Mach 5 has been successfully tested at a site in the United States.
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Britain's Reaction Engines said a key component of its Sabre hypersonic engine has passed a critical cooling test at the Colorado Air and Space Port. (Reaction Engines photo)
Reaction Engines said in an Oct. 22 statement that the precooler heat exchanger element of its Sabre (synergetic air-breathing rocket engine) had run at the equivalent of five times the speed of sound at its test facility at the Colorado Air and Space Port outside of Denver.
The ultra-lightweight heat exchanger, or precooler, is the vital component which stops the engine overheating at high flight speeds.
The air-breathing rocket engine could be a game changer, with Reaction Engines and its backers targeting hypersonic combat jets, civil aircraft, reusable space vehicles and other platforms as potential applications.
BAE Engines, Rolls-Royce and Boeing’s venture capital arm HorizonX are all stakeholders in the company.
Reaction Engines has also attracted development money from the British Government, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the European Space Agency and others
The tests demonstrated the precooler’s ability to successfully cool airflow at speeds significantly in excess of the operational limit of any jet-engine powered aircraft in history.
“Mach 5 is more than twice as fast as the cruising speed of the Concorde and over 50% faster than the SR-71 Blackbird aircraft – the world’s fastest jet-engine powered aircraft," said the company.
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The Colorado tests were part of a DARPA project known as HTX, which was awarded to Reaction Engines in 2017 aimed at conducting high-temperature airflow testing in the United States.
“The company has successfully completed tests in the U.S. of its proprietary heat exchanger that exposed it to hypersonic conditions approaching 1,000 degrees centigrade (~1,800°F). This test program validated precooler performance under the high-temperature airflow conditions expected during high-speed flight, up to Mach 5,” said the company.
The precooler quenched 1,000 degree Celsius temperatures in less than one-twentieth of a second.
The most recent trial follows tests undertaken in the United States in April which saw the precooler successfully operate at temperatures of 420 degrees centigrade – matching the thermal conditions corresponding to Mach 3.3 flight.
Richard Varvill, Reaction Engines’ co-founder and current chief technology officer, said the latest test was a “momentous landmark.”
“The performance of our proprietary precooler technology was validated at hypersonic flight conditions and takes us closer to realising our objective of developing the first air-breathing engine capable of accelerating from zero to Mach 5,” he said.
The success of the test two weeks ago opens the way to the trial of a full Sabre core engine in the next 12-18 months said a company spokesman.
The company is currently putting the finishing touches to a new facility at Westcott, southern England, where the next phase of engine test work will be undertaken.
Engineers are already in the early stages of looking at what a bespoke platform to test the Sabre engine might look like.
One option sometime in the next decade is a Hawk jet trainer-sized unmanned air vehicle with a delta wing, said the spokesman.
An early application for the technology, though, could be on an existing turbojet.
Earlier this year the British Ministry of Defence announced it was funding a program looking at the potential for improving performance of one of today’s combat jets by adapting the precooler technology.
The UK program will undertake design studies, research, development, analysis and experimentation relating to high-Mach advanced propulsion systems and will be led by Rolls-Royce, with Reaction Engines and BAE Systems as technology partners.
The then-chief of the air staff, Air Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier, told a conference in London in July that the EJ-200 engine, which powers the Typhoon fighter, was one option being considered.
Its use in a yet-to-be-launched, British, sixth-generation fighter program known as Tempest could be another potential application, he hinted at the time.