History of transport aircraft evolution

Аuthors

Arutyunov A. G.^*, Dydyshko D. V.^**, Kuznetsov K. V.^***

Volga-Dnepr airlines design center, 35, Usacheva, block 1, Moscow, 119048, Russia

*e-mail: artem.arutyunov@volga-dnepr.com
**e-mail: danil.dydyshko@volga-dnepr.com
***e-mail: konstantin.kuznetsov@volga-dnepr.com

Abstract

Design of a new aircraft starts fr om collecting and analyzing of the data on aircraft created earlier, being in operation prospective models. It allows understanding the position of the aircraft under design, evaluate its competitiveness, and identify the areas wh ere the breakthrough technical solutions are required.

This article presents a brief analysis of the history of initiation and development of the transport airplanes. It outlines the aircraft, which can be considered the most generic for the given class. The article presents and analyzes the data on certain transport and passenger aircraft characteristics, and describes the transport aircraft most distinctive features.

Transport aircraft existing in the world are necessary to classify according to their purpose as follows: military transport aircraft, civil transport aircraft with cargo ramp, freighter aircraft and special transport aircraft.

The development of the transport airplanes can be traced by the examples of the following aircraft, characterizing each of these stages:

Arado Ar.232 — the first airplane designed for special military transport assignments;

Me.323 — the first serial military transport aircraft;

Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Antonov — the first mass military transport aircraft;

Antonov An-22 — the first heavy-lift transport aircraft;

Lochheed C-5 Galaxy and Antonov An-124 Ruslan — the first super heavy-lift transport aircraft.

Some parameters dependencies of these airplanes, characterizing their transport capacities, presented in this article, reveal that the advanced transport airplane (ATA) will not probably have the cross-section of its cargo bay more than 27 ... 30 m². The ATA’s useful-to-takeoff load ratio will be not less than 65%. There are no preconditions for the ATA cruising flight speed growth, and most likely it will remain at the level of ≈800 km/h. The commercial transport airplane will most probably be equipped with two turbojet bypass engines with higher bypass ration ≈ 10. Takeoff thrust of currently existing engines allows create transport aircraft with take-off weight of about 280...300 tons.

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Keywords:

transport aircraft, cargo ramp, cargo bay, advanced transport aircraft, military transport aircraft, special transport aircraft

References

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