Originally Posted by
Volume
I always thought that the sloped area at the aft end of the floor was the rear airstair (just present on the pre-production aircraft)..
Only the two prototypes had the airstairs. Even preproduction aircraft 01 (G-AXDN) already had the same door arrangement as the production aircraft. Also the airstairs were in the tail section, without any wing structure at that location.
... but I just read on
heritageconcorde.com/ that this is for "system routing". Does somebody know more ? Seems to be a lot of space for systems that would end just in the middle of the cabin.
I had to pull out my copies of the "blueprints".....
The picture on 'heritageconcorde' is a good find!
If you look at the perspective drawing bottom right, you're basically looking at the volume of fuel tank n° 6 (which is located under-floor just to the rear of the main landing gear bay) with the floor on top and the sloped area leading into the main landing gear bay in front ; the rear wall of the landing gear bay is in the plane of fuselage frame n° 60 (see the side view at the top of the picture).
The "system routing" would therefore simply refer to the various 'underfloor' services routed to the landing gear.
There was a lot of stuff passing right under your feet in Concorde!
One problem with your photo..... there is no door anywhere looking
rearward from frame n° 60, neither on the prototypes, nor on any of the other aircraft.
However.... the
forward wall of the landing gear bay is in the plane of fuselage frame n° 54. And the blueprints show the same type of 'sloped area' at that location, this time making an 'indentation' in tank n° 8, which is just
forward of the landing gear bay.
And yes, on the prototypes, counting about 6 windows to the front, there is one of the two emergency exits (which were replaced by the mid-cabin passenger and service doors on all the later Concordes).
So the section on your photo was cut roughly at frame n° 54, and the photo looks
forward into the cabin.
I hope this helps?
Unfortunately I do not have a flatbed scanner, and all the drawings I have are larger than A4. But I'll see what I can do... a picture always says more than a thousand words.
CJ