ABSTRACT
Paolo Bellomi
Avio S.p.A
Head of Product Development & New Projects
The paper describes the activities in which the AVIO Spa company is currently involved on the field
of the hypersonic vehicles technologies, with specific relevance to the subjects of hypersonic airbreathing propulsion and hypersonic flight test platforms.
Since 2004 AVIO Spa has established contacts with the U.K. company Reaction Engines Ltd
(REL) in the frame of the hypersonic air-breathing propulsion research. Currently REL and AVIO
are exploring a cooperating on the design and development of turbo-machinery components for the
Sabre propulsion system to be possibly applied in Skylon reusable vehicle class.
AVIO Spa has recently started a cooperation with CIRA (Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali) for
the study and the development of ramjet propulsion systems to be applied to high-speed flight
vehicles for both military and commercial applications, that include, among others, flight test bed
vehicles and air-breathing propulsion first stages for small launch vehicles. In this context, a plant
for carrying on ground tests on ram-combustors has been foreseen too.
Avio outlines the opportunities disclosed by Vega availability for exploration of the re-entry phase
of flight. IXV, Pride are examples already under development. Moreover, Avio proposes a version
of Cira USV (USV-P) vehicle embedding a LOx-CH4 Aerospike engine, based on Theseus
thruster. In a typical mission the propulsion system will enable the re-entry vehicle (orbited by
Vega) for in-orbit and re-entry manoeuvres, and the re-entry trajectory will allow a complete
characterization of aerospike performance in the whole range of attitudes and hypersonic regimes.
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The same opportunity will apply to in flight testing of scram-jet based engines.
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