Chasing the Demon in the sky.
Via scientificblogging ,isa.org
When a jet is flying faster than the speed of sound, one small mistake can tear it apart. It was so feared that the physics blended with the supernatural in the mid 1940s. Luckily, Chuck Yeager didn’t believe in demons.
There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. His controls would freeze up, his plane would buffet wildly, and he would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man would ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.( Ridley in the 1983 movie ‘The Right Stuff.’)
But at truly high speeds flight still has plenty of risk and when the jet is so experimental that it must fly unmanned, only a computer control system can pilot it so the magic involves a control system that can react to variables like a human. Ohio State University engineers say they have designed control system software that can do just that — by adapting to changing conditions during a flight.
Government agencies have been developing faster-than-sound vehicles for decades. The latest supersonic combustion ramjets — called scramjets — burn air for fuel, and could one day carry people to space or around the world in a matter of hours.
The recent success of NASA’s X-43 hypersonic jet has spurred research into the control systems for these vehicles, said Lisa Fiorentini, doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State University. She and associate professor Andrea Serrani are developing a new control system in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (ARFL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
