This New Ceramic Coating Gets Us Closer to Reliable Hypersonic Air Travel

The development of a new kind of ceramic capable of resisting insanely high temperatures would eliminate a major obstacle blocking the path to hypersonic air travel.

There are plenty of potential uses for a material that can deal with temperatures of 3,000° Celsius (about 5,400° Fahrenheit), especially on military and space technology, but anything that will get us across the globe in the time it takes to watch three Game of Thrones episodes has our attention.

Researchers from the University of Manchester and Central South University (CSU) in China have designed a ceramic coating that resists two of the biggest problems caused by exposure to high temperatures – ablation and oxidation.

Expose any material to a high enough temperature and its molecules will jiggle loose and fall off, especially if they're being scoured by high speed particles speeding by. That's ablation.

The second is the souped up reaction with oxygen changing the molecular structure, called oxidation.

For an aircraft to move at hypersonic speeds and not arrive toasted, you'll want to protect its components against the high temperatures caused by air compressing and rubbing against parts of its structure, especially its leading edges.

Those temperatures could potentially reach 3,000°C (5,400° Fahrenheit) at speeds considered hypersonic, between 6,174 and 12,348 kilometres per hour (3,836 to 7,673 miles per hour).

Getting passengers from London to New York in about 2 hours would revolutionise travel, and is a dream that some say could be achievable in the next decade.

This new research has found an even more promising material in a new form of carbide ceramic that could resist the super high temperatures of hypersonic travel.

"Current candidate UHTCs for use in extreme environments are limited and it is worthwhile exploring the potential of new single-phase ceramics in terms of reduced evaporation and better oxidation resistance," says lead researcher Ping Xiao from the University of Manchester.

"In addition, it has been shown that introducing such ceramics into carbon fibre- reinforced carbon matrix composites may be an effective way of improving thermal-shock resistance."