This team at UCF could be doing some good research in hypersonic combustion, particularly in demonstrating 3 secs of flame stabilization. This is only a tiny bit of work for engine development, even for combustion system. From this particular Fox report --
1. This is a flame stabilization experiment at atmospheric condition (1 atm ONLY)-->> at hypersonic speed, the compression ratio will have to be at least 50+, so the combustion will be at 50+ atm pressure. A typical high-pressure combustion test rig will be at 10-atm or higher in lab condition, which is still far from the REAL hypersonic combustion condition. In one word, long way to go.
2. The flame was ONLY stablized for 3 seconds, combustion in gas turbine needs to be continous for hours.
3. Flame stabilization is a small fraction of combustion work for a gas turbine combusiton system, not to mention the whole engine system or the plane system.
4. It is impossible to judge from this small group of grad. students/prof(s) at UCF that Hypersonic flying is anywhere near reality.
