Any idea what this is?
 

Came across this picture and I have absolutely no idea what it is/was.

Suggestions on please.............

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2b0e2a4a85.jpg

Hi..Kelvin 40 jet concept from Australian designer Marc Newson..

Kelvin40 | Marc Newson Ltd

Thought it might have been another new Tesla truck

Unbreakable windows on this one.

He's a successful designer of all sorts of items. I think this design might be a coffee table.

Oi, that's my new Hoover! Er, vacuum cleaner...

Ah, but, the leading question.....do we know if it ever actually flew ?

Many thanks!!

Don't think it flew - he's a concept designer (who did the QF 380 interior) not an aeronautical engineer - from his website:-

"Inspired by his lifelong interest in aviation, Marc set out to create a small jet-powered airplane that would restore excitement to the experience of civilian flying. This concept jet is named after Lord Kelvin, the nineteenth century physicist and mathematician known for his research in thermodynamics and absolute temperature, and the main character of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris, another source of inspiration.

For Marc, the Kelvin40 is a very personal object, resulting from his obsession with the technology, materials, and processes that derive from the aerospace industry, where precision is of foremost concern and technology is constantly changing. He also believes the jet engine to be one of greatest inventions, unsurpassed to this day.

In aviation, form follows function and so Marc created an aesthetic object that is a direct result of the mechanical requirements of aeronautical design. He involved himself in all aspects of the design and production of this concept jet plane. Its wingspan measures almost twenty seven feet and corresponds directly to its length. Likening the plane to a sculptural object, Marc emphasised the customised elements such as the handmade panels that were carefully adjusted and riveted over the course of a year, the deep blue plush upholstery, and the red detailing at the air intake of the airplane that alludes to a mouth."

Also https://www.designisthis.com/blog/en...pt-marc-newson

could have been a BD-10 if they'd ever tried to build it .............

I would call him a stylist, rather than a designer. An industrial designer integrates functionality with aesthetics (and manufacturability, if they're really good). A stylist sticks a skin of a fashionable kind on top of the working parts. Newson styled a camera for Pentax which was universally panned for its ergonomics (and its toy-like looks) and only stayed in production for a year.

The Kelvin 40 was discussed on Secret Projects back in 2007, plenty more photos!

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/thr...airplane.2824/

That too, and why has he stuck the main gear several meters behind the CG?

I think you could ask the same question of the B-47 and the B-52

...and the dragiest intake design I've ever seen, with no boundary-layer bleeds and a configuration that looks like compressor stall/surge at landing alpha was actually a specific design objective. The intake looks rather oversized for any engine likely to be installed anyway.

PDR

For the B47 & B52 it was a design trade-off. The aircraft were so long that any significant rotation would have required very long undercarriage legs, with attendant issues for ground dynamics (let alone weapon loading, maintenance and hangarage). So they designed the aeroplanes to NOT rotate - take-off flap gave them sufficient lift coefficient to just lift off "flat". You can see the side-effect of this when a B52 does a low pass in landing config. It's travelling faster than the normal over-the-hedge speed so it has to fly with the fuselage attitude several degrees nose down.

You wouldn't make this kind of trade-off with a small aeroplane on a relatively long undercarriage - aside from the difficulty in rotation it would be severely directionally unstable.

PDR

Agreed, but the flat take-off wasn't achieved with just flaps, in fact the B-52's wing is set at an angle of incidence of six degrees to the fuselage C/L and many of the nose-low high speed passes at airshows are made "clean"! The B-47 is similar, but the wing incidence is only about 2.5 degrees.

and the B-47 often required a lot of JATO to get off at all

...and a parachute to slow it down on approach


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....08811f8e2e.jpg

When I was at Abingdon in 1959, B-47's trailing parachutes on the approach to Brize Norton were seen regularly.

Brilliant design but optomised for flying - not landing or taking off........................ and they built over 2000 of them.......