Not too long ago, commercial supersonic aircraft flights were part of the air transportation system. In the 1970's we had the Russian-built Tupolev Tu-144 and the BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde, the latest being tin operation for 27 years. The work documented in this dissertation focused on the viability of bringing back supersonic aircraft as a transportation mode. Throughout three years, Virginia Tech and a team from NASA have been combining efforts to develop a model capable of predicting future air travel demand for supersonic vehicles. The model can predict future supersonic commercial services and allows aircraft designers from NASA to optimize aircraft performance and characteristics by maximizing the potential air travel demand.
The final product of this study was the development of the Low-Boom Supersonic Aircraft Model (LBSAM). The development progress took three years to be completed, and during each year, a version of the model with the preliminary predictions was made available to NASA. Each of the three versions of the model predicts future supersonic commercial services. What differentiates each version is the data, method, and aircraft type/design implemented; the latest version of the model is more realistic and provides a higher number of functionalities.
The first version of the model predicted the possible supersonic commercial service for three aircraft types: each with two variations. An 18-seat, 40-seat, and 60-seat low-boom and non-low-boom aircraft were analyzed. The second version of the model analyzed a 20-seat and 40-seat low-boom, non-low-boom aircraft with restrictions and non-low-boom aircraft without restrictions. The latest version of the model tries to estimate potential demand for a 43-seat and a 52-seat supersonic low-boom aircraft design. The low-boom concept refers to the implementation of technology that reduces the loudness of a sonic boom. A non-low-boom concept refers to an aircraft flying faster than Mach 1 with the technology's implementation that reduces the loudness of a sonic boom. The final results suggest that for a 52-seat LBSA, the potential worldwide demand is as follows.
• 33.4 million seats worldwide. Assuming an overland range of 3,200 nm., an overland Mach 1.7, and an overland fuel scale factor of 0.98.
• 772 aircraft needed worldwide. Assuming an overland range of 2,800 nm., an overland Mach 1.7, and an overland fuel scale factor of 0.90.
• 1,032 one-way OD pairs where LBSA can operate. Assuming an overland range of 2,800 nm., an overland Mach 1.7, and an overland fuel scale factor of 0.90.
The LBSAM is mainly driven by the cost per passenger mile values calculated for each one-way Origin-Destination (OD) pair. Additional uncertainties in the model include the market share and annual aircraft utilization. The market share refers to the percent of the demand that will switch from current subsonic commercial services to commercial supersonic services. During the three-year work, we considered a market share of 50% and 100%. Aircraft utilization refers to the number of hours that the airline will be able to use the aircraft. The majority of the projections were based on a 3,500-hour aircraft utilization. / Doctor of Philosophy / Not too long ago, commercial supersonic aircraft flights were part of the air transportation system. An aircraft flying faster than the speed of sound is known as an aircraft flying at supersonic speed. Current commercial aircraft fly at subsonic speed. Subsonic speed refers to aircraft flying at a speed lower than the speed of sound. In the 1970's we had the Russian-built Tupolev Tu-144 and the BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde, the latest being tin operation for 27 years. The work documented in this dissertation focused on the viability of bringing back supersonic aircraft as a transportation mode. Throughout three years, Virginia Tech and a team from NASA have been combining efforts to develop a model capable of predicting future air travel demand for supersonic vehicles. The model can predict future supersonic commercial services and allows aircraft designers from NASA to optimize aircraft performance and characteristics by maximizing the potential air travel demand.
The purpose of this dissertation effort is to provide a better understanding of what could be the potential commercial demand for supersonic flight in the near future. We consider all the benefits and characteristics of supersonic flight and studied in detail what percentage of the travelers might be willing to migrate from the current subsonic market to the supersonic market. We estimated this ratio by studying the spending behavior of passengers in the current market. How much more are passengers willing to pay to save time? We can infer how much travelers value their time by comparing direct flights versus flights with an intermediate stop.
The results show that a demand of 33.4 million seats could be reached by the year 2040. The supersonic market would consist of more than one thousand one-way origin-destination pairs worldwide, and more than seven hundred supersonic aircraft are expected to satisfy the forecast demand.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/106575 |
| Date | 09 November 2021 |
| Creators | Freire Burgos, Edwin Ruben |
| Contributors | Civil and Environmental Engineering, Trani, Antonio A., Wang, Linbing, Flintsch, Gerardo W., Hotle, Susan |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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