Back in the early days as the Concorde was being developed, many designs were tossed around. The one that ultimately emerged was mostly an all-aluminium design that featured a slender ogee-delta wing.
The plane would be powered by four BS-593 Olympus engines with about 35,000 pounds of thrust. The plane’s straight turbojets had been equipped with afterburners which it would use for both takeoff and acceleration. In essence, the craft would be a civilian version of the military’s Olympus 22S engine developed by Bristol-Siddeley.
The original design could seat up to 128 passengers, but this was reduced to closer to 90 to 100 passengers for transatlantic flights.
There had originally been some thought of building the Concorde out of titanium, which would have allowed for faster speeds. However, the designers felt this would be risky and somewhat difficult, and they went instead with aluminium. Because of this, the speed was limited to a slower Mach 2.2.
With modern aircraft, the primary structural components are the fuselage, wings, tail surfaces, landing gear and power plant. The fuselage is especially important since this is where the wings, landing gear, and tail are attached. It also contains the cockpit and passenger compartment as well as the engines.
The Concorde’s fuselage has a quite-small diameter of only 113 inches. This is because a larger fuselage would cause too much wave drag.
The rudders and ailerons on the Concorde have a similar design, though the rudders were designed by BAE System, whereas the ailerons were designed by EADS, France. The surfaces are a metal honeycomb design so as to maintain the stiffness which is needed for a slender cross-section with a minimum weight.
It features aluminium alloy skins which have been chemically milled locally in order to produce the maximum skin thickness. These skins then are permanently bonded to the honeycomb core with a film adhesive.
At the rear of the aircraft’s fuselage a nose gear and auxiliary gear, each having four wheels. The bogies sport a system that detects if the landing gear is under-inflated, and if so, sends a signal to the cockpit notifying them of the problem.
