This week British Airways is rolling out for pre-flight ground testing an Aerospatiale/British Aerospace Concorde that it has fitted with Kevlar fuel tank liners. BA's technical and quality director Jim O'Sullivan says that before the aircraft carries out its flight tests, which he hopes will take place "within three to five weeks", the ground tests have to determine how the fuel behaves in the lined tanks, and whether the liners affect the quantity of unusable fuel. There is a small space underneath each liner section to enable fuel to circulate, essential to the fuel's wing-surface cooling function when the aircraft flies at supersonic speeds.
Source: Flight International
