Everything about Supercruise totally explained
A
supercruising aircraft is able to maintain
supersonic speeds in level flight without the use of
afterburners.
Advantages
Afterburners, which most military aircraft use to travel at supersonic speeds, are very inefficient compared to conventional jet engine operation due to the low pressures typically found in the exhaust section. Therefore, in general, an aircraft which can supercruise has greater endurance at supersonic speeds than one which cannot. Furthermore, without a requirement to carry such a large quantity of fuel, a supercruise-capable aircraft can have a more favourable
fuel fraction, the proportion of the plane's overall mass which is devoted to fuel. Supercruise increased the stealth behavior. An afterburner plume is a significant source of IR and a Radar wave reflector.
History
The first turbine-powered aircraft to exceed Mach 1 in level flight without afterburners was the P.1 prototype of the
English Electric Lightning, on
August 4,
1954. However, this early demonstration of supercruise was extremely limited; the Lightning could supercruise at approximately Mach 1.02, while later versions were able to achieve much higher speeds.
Only the civilian SSTs
Concorde and
Tupolev Tu-144 spent most of their time supercruising. Many of the fighters listed as capable of supercruise can only marginally exceed the
speed of sound without afterburners and may only be able to do so without an external weapons load. In day-to-day operation Concorde used reheat (afterburners) to accelerate through the high-
drag transonic flight regime; although it was capable of reaching its top speed without the use of reheat, the excessive fuel consumption involved in doing so made this impractical for commercial flights. Unlike Concorde's Soviet counterpart, the Tu-144, which was capable of supercruise at Mach 1.6, Concorde could supercruise at Mach 2.0. For the Tupolev to attain this speed, it required continuous reheat, and a cruising speed of Mach 1.6 was adopted for the service period of the 10 first-generation Tu-144s. Later Tu-144s had more powerful military engines fitted which were not as restrictive, giving only slightly less range but higher speeds than Concorde.
Military use
For military aircraft, the
F-22 Raptor's supercruise capabilities are touted as a major performance advantage over other fighters. Even so, supercruising uses much more fuel to travel the same distance than at subsonic speeds:
The Air Force Association
estimates that use of supercruise for a dash as part of a mission would cut the F-22's combat radius from about 600 to about . However, this is still unconfirmed as the altitude and flight profile are classified (as are most of the F-22's capabilities). There is no way to compare this with other aircraft; however, most aircraft using afterburner to fly at supersonic speeds will have exhausted their fuel supplies very rapidly.
The F-22 has demonstrated supercruise speeds of at least Mach 1.58, a difference of indicated airspeed (KIAS) at . Supercruise in militarily significant parlance is meant to imply a significant increase in effective combat speed with a full weapons load over existing types. Virtually all current and past jet fighters, prior to the F-22, cruise at approximately Mach 0.8~0.9 with a militarily significant weapons load. The F-22 represents a significant advance in cruise speed over previous types (for performance of current USAF types, see Air Force Magazine, May 2006, "Gallery of USAF Weapons," pp. 147-155 - ).
The key challenge in attaining supercruise isn't simply a high thrust to weight ratio vis a vis the aircraft but a radical redesign of the engine because the air entering a jet engine must always travel at subsonic speeds, regardless of aircraft speed. Otherwise compressibility waves (or shock waves) will create uncontrollable vibrations among the compressor vanes. Engine inlet design therefore can effectively limit the speed of the aircraft, regardless of thrust. The
SR-71 Blackbird's distinctive nosecone is designed to funnel air around the
J-58 engine for that very reason.
There are few engines in production that have effectively solved the problem: the PW F119 on the F-22 Raptor (the PW F135 and the RR/GE F136 used on the
Joint Strike Fighter have higher thrust but the JSF doesn't supercruise), the EJ200 engine built by
Rolls Royce adds the supercruise capability in the
Eurofighter Typhoon, and is capable of supercruising at M1.5 [ http://www.eurofighter.at/austria/td_lu.asp Austrian Eurofighter Site in German], Typhoon pilots have stated that M1.3 is attainable in combat configuration with external stores. Independently Russia also seems to be working on an all new Al41 engine with a complete redesign underway for the PAK FA program.
Supersonic, but non supercruising aircraft
The
Pratt & Whitney J58 engines of the
Lockheed A-12 and
SR-71 Blackbird were designed for sustained and efficient operation at supersonic speeds using afterburners with air that was diverted past the turbojet core of the engine. This gave a good compression ratio and higher efficiency simply due to the ram effect at the high operating speed of the aircraft. The afterburners acted essentially as
ramjets and these types of engines achieve peak efficiency at around Mach 3.
In a somewhat similar vein, the
XB-70A Valkyrie made use of specially designed turbojets (six
General Electric YJ-93 engines) to sustain speeds in excess of Mach 3. Unlike the
J-58 engines powering the SR-71, the YJ-93 engines of the XB-70A didn't require the use of special fuel, and didn't radically modify the intake/exhaust geometry in order to achieve Mach 3 flight. The YJ-93 engines did operate in afterburner at Mach 3; however, the engines were specifically designed to be very efficient in afterburner, and the XB-70A AV-2 prototype sustained speeds in excess of Mach 3 for 32 minutes on one flight. Furthermore, the type was designed to operate at such speeds for periods of hours over intercontinental ranges.
Aircraft with supercruise
Aircraft with supercruise include:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Supercruise'.
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