Facts and figures

LAPCAT II is a logical follow-up of the previous, co-funded EC-project LAPCAT I, whose objective was to reduce the duration of antipodal flights (that is, flights between two diametrically opposite ...

LAPCAT II is a collaboratiove project for small or medium scale focused research projects through the 7th Framework under Theme 7: Transport.

General outlineThe baseline mission requirement of LAPCAT is to reduce travelling time of long-distance flights, e.g. Brussels to Sydney, in about 2 to 4 hours. This requires a new flight regime with Mach numbers ranging from 4 to 8. At these high speeds, classical turbo-jet engines need to be replaced by advanced airbreathing propulsion concepts and hence related technologies need to be developed.Key objectives are the definition and evaluation of different propulsion cycles and concepts, enhancement of integrated engine/aircraft performance, mass-efficient turbines and heat exchangers and finally high-pressure & supersonic combustion experiments and modelling.Though the project is mainly technology driven, operational conditions and constraints are defined by several conceptual vehicle designs of which three are highlighted in our Experiments and modelling webpage which can be seen from the right hand navigation bar.