TU-144 - attack rider of supersonic aviation

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Tu-144 is not just the "first sign" of supersonic passenger aviation. This is one of the symbols of the Land of Soviets of the Cold War era and its technical superiority over the Western world. Tu-144, almost twice the speed of sound and several decades ahead of its time, marked the beginning of a new era of passenger aviation, which, however, has not yet come. Its only competitor in this field - the Anglo-French "Concorde" - suffered an even more deafening fiasco.

In the sixties, mankind, perhaps, was still technologically and scientifically not ready for such achievements. At that time, world science practically knew nothing about metal fatigue. The entire history of the competition between these two machines was accompanied by continuous disasters and failures on both sides.

When it became known about the joint Anglo-French project to createa fundamentally new supersonic passenger airliner, the reaction of the Soviet Union was lightning fast. The answer to this project was to be the Tu-144. "Concorde" was calculated for a cruising flight speed in the range of 2200-2300 km / h. The Soviet counterpart needed to surpass this indicator, like many others. Nikita Khrushchev did not want to yield to his Western enemies in anything.

The development of this ambitious project was entrusted to the Tupolev Design Bureau. The brand "TU-144" was assigned to the new aircraft, and the Voronezh Aviation Plant was engaged in its construction. The birth of a new brainchild of the Soviet aviation industry before the Concorde and the technical superiority of the Soviet airliner over the Anglo-French aircraft were regarded as the most important political tasks. No money was spared for the construction of the Tu-144, as was customary in the USSR.

The whole design of this supersonic metal bird was the embodiment of a bright and progressive technological idea: he fed the workpiece to an automated CNC machine and at the output received a huge fragment of the fuselage or wing plane. Automation, of course, did not fail, but with this approach, for some reason, they forgot that for semi-finished products of such a gigantic size, ingots of the appropriate scale are also needed. They are quite difficult to cast, which leads to the formation of local inhomogeneities, foreign inclusions and defects that weaken the metal.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the purpose of the machine. After all, the TU-144 aircraft had to overcome the sound barrier, which means it had to withstand colossaloverload. For example, its technological rival Concorde, after not the longest operational period, wings began to fall off right in flight. And it didn't take long to figure out why. He passed various tests perfectly. Including in deep pools under conditions of very high pressure. After all, it was simply discontinued.

About the same fate befell the TU-144. After processing a structure made of a thick all-metal plate, thin (up to two millimeters) lintels remained in some places. They were torn over time, unable to withstand constant huge overloads.

And yet, the Tu-144 significantly surpassed the Concorde in terms of service life, although the memory of the crashes of this machine is still preserved. Perhaps the most famous of them is the disaster that happened at the Le Bourget air show in 1973. The invaluable experience gained during the creation of this machine was successfully used in the design and construction of heavy supersonic airliners Tu-22M and Tu-160.

And the Tu-144s themselves were successfully used in various scientific studies until the mid-nineties: the study of the ozone shell of the planet, solar eclipses, etc. Thirteen world records were set on the modification of this machine - the Tu-144D, which have not yet been broken.