History
During World War II, a tremendous amount of time and effort were put into researching high-speed jet- and rocket-powered aircraft, predominantly by the Germans. After the war, the US and UK took in several German scientists and military technologies through Operation Paperclip to begin putting more emphasis on their own weapons development, including jet engines. The Bell X-1 attained supersonic flight in 1947 and, by the early 1960s, rapid progress towards faster aircraft suggested that operational aircraft would be flying at "hypersonic" speeds within a few years. Except for specialized rocket research vehicles like the North American X-15 and other rocket-powered spacecraft, aircraft top speeds have remained level, generally in the range of Mach 1 to Mach 3.
In the 1950s and 1960s a variety of experimental scramjet engines were built and ground tested in the US and the UK. In 1964, Dr. Frederick S. Billig and Dr. Gordon L. Dugger submitted a patent application for a supersonic combustion ramjet based on Billig’s Ph.D. thesis. This patent was issued in 1981 following the removal of an order of secrecy.
In 1981 tests were made in Australia under the guidance of Professor Ray Stalker in the T3 ground test facility at ANU.
First successful flight test of Scramjet was performed by Russia in 1991. It was axisymmetric hydrogen-fueled dual-mode scramjet developed by Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM), Moscow in the late 1970s. The scramjet flight was flown captive-carry atop the SA-5 surface-to-air missile that included an experiment flight support unit known as the "Hypersonic Flying Laboratory" (HFL), “Kholod”. Then from 1992 to 1998 an additional 6 flight tests of the axisymmetric high-speed scramjet-demonstrator were conducted by CIAM together with France and then with NASA, USA. Maximum flight velocity greater than Mach 6.4 was achieved and Scramjet operation during 77 seconds was demonstrated. These flight test series also provided insight into autonomous hypersonic flight controls.
No scramjet powered vehicle has yet been produced outside an experimental program.
Read more about this topic: Scramjet
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