Scientists in China have developed a plane engine which they claim can make the aircraft go anywhere in the world in two hours.
As reported in South China Morning Post, the engine has shown unprecedented performance during a trial run in a Beijing tunnel in terms of thrust, fuel efficiency and operational stability.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal called Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, the team of researchers said that this engine can serve reusable trans atmospheric planes. They can take off horizontally from the airport runway, accelerate into the Earth’s orbit, re-enter into the atmosphere. The paper said that it can finally land off at an airport.
The team of scientists has been led by Professor Jiang Zonglin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mechanics.
The report also says that the design of the innovative and futuristic engine is not complex. It has a hydrogen fuel injector, single-stage air inlet and combustion chamber.
A researcher based out of Beijing remarked that the engine can be easily mistaken for a sliding board. This researcher was not involved with the study but he was informed about the same.
When high-speed wind hits the inlet, it creates shock waves. These waves then met hydrogen fuel at the combustor. The resulting explosion pushes the engine forward.
This engine can take a flight up to 16 times the speed of sound. However, as per a researcher, the only tunnel in the world capable of stimulating the flight is still under construction in Beijing.
The team of scientists that have developed it is calling it ‘standing oblique detonation ramjet engine’ or sodramjet engine. As per them, their engine provides hope of taking a commercial flight to hypersonic speed or five times the speed of sound. Scramjets, the current hypersonic flight engines are too weak, too hungry and too unstable.