Preliminary assessment of a liquid methane powered commercial hypersonic aircraft

In the early 1970s, different studies related to the potential exploitation of liquid methane as fuel for long range supersonic and hypersonic commercial aircraft were carried out in the US, in order to verify the competitiveness of an alternative vehicle architecture which could compete against the European Concorde. In the end, the studies did not produce a concrete vehicle concept, but the theoretical foundations of the studies are still valid nowadays. On the other hand, the wide interest in hydrogen for aviation produced, more recently, different concepts and studies, also in the field of high-speed aviation, however often highlighting the limitations related to storage capabilities and thermal management. Liquid methane, can offer higher energy per unit mass with reference to kerosene, benefitting from only half the density and producing thus an advantage with reference to hydrogen from the point of view of energy per unit volume. The methane is also intrinsically cheaper than hydrogen and may produce already some interesting improvements to emissions with reference to conventional fuel. The thesis aims at evaluating a hypersonic aircraft concept powered by liquid methane from both technical and operational perspectives in order to compare the effectiveness of the selected case study with a hydrogen competitor.