It is hard for someone like me to tell how serious this plan for a completely silent aircraft is. This in particular made me dubious:
Environmental campaigners and people living on flight paths have already welcomed the campaign to build the jet.
“Campaign”? That makes me think that this design is as much politics as technology, a suspicion that is confirmed when I look at the website of the Silent Aircraft Initiative, which is the organisation that is promoting this scheme.
The initiative aims to improve competitiveness in the UK aerospace sector by changing the way research is undertaken, through extensive collaboration with a much wider franchise of stakeholders than ever before. By embracing this larger community, the Silent Aircraft Initiative seeks to produce a truly optimised concept design that contributes to the prosperity of the UK in an environmentally sustainable way.
Well, I suppose it could work. But it all smells to me a bit like a rerun of Concorde, in its very early stage, the stage when they were hustling up public money and political support. There is the same obsessive pursuit of one popular variable, in this case silence, to replace Concorde’s equally narrow focus – with insufficient subsequent regard for either economy or cacophony – on speed. The thing even looks rather like Concorde.
I can find no mention of how extremely inconvenient maintaining this new contraption would surely be, what with the engines being on the top.
Comments anyone? Is this a serious scheme, or just kite flying? Or is it serious, but only at a very early stage? And is that BBC report wrong only in implying that the thing is nearly ready to be built?
Do all generic aircraft designs in their early stages have to be political, one way or another – either paid for wholly by a government or by governments in secret, or else “campaigned” for, out there in the public realm?
The Kyotothopter? It’ll never fly Orville!
I don’t know if the silent part is real or not but the basic airframe looks like a Boeing concept intended to squeeze a lot of passengers into a plane that could still land in existing airports.
I don’t think this will go anywhere anytime soon. Any changes to the aircraft that reduce noise will probably reduce fuel efficiency as well. Since fuel cost are a primary cost in the airline industry I don’t see them going with an airframe that gives worse milage.
Having said that, I have always thought that noise was the major impediment to the widespread use of “flying cars” Any research that would make smaller aircraft significantly quieter would certainly be welcomed.
Compare and contrast with this design for a small aircraft that would cut down noise by having a very high rate of climb so that the noisy “footprint” was low.
It was originally designed by Richard Noble and his gang but when the money got tight the project was hijacked by a City financier – so I’m not at all certain anything is actually still happening with it.
I suspect the “Silent Aircraft” may go the same way on a larger scale.
I wonder what the enviros are going to do when they realize that such technology would really help the good guys US/UK to kill the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan or where ever by the time it’s ready.
I’ve seen this design somewhere before and Shannon may be right about a Boeing concept. But it seems to me I saw a TV program 2-3 years ago about various “future” aircraft designs and it was the work of a group at a university in California — they had 10 foot model flying in the video.
As Shannon notes the objective was high passenger capacity without increasing the wing span which is one of the major constraints at airports as it determines the number of A/C that can be parked at a terminal and maneuver on the tarmac.
If BBC claims this as Cambridge work I think they are wrong.
I think we’re talking about very quiet for those below the flight path here–hence the interest of Luton Airport in declaring itself a caring, sharing partner. Not completely silent. That’s just billing. Shoving anything big through the air fast is bound to make some noise.
Here it is
Blended Wing see http://www.twitt.org/bldwing.htm — and http://aero.stanford.edu/BWBProject.html at Stanford University
BBC strikes out
I don’t think this will go anywhere anytime soon. Any changes to the aircraft that reduce noise will probably reduce fuel efficiency as well. Since fuel cost are a primary cost in the airline industry I don’t see them going with an airframe that gives worse milage.
…actually, the blended wing design is better for fuel efficiency. In a normal airplane, the wings and tail are all that generates lift, in a blended wing, the entire body contributes (albeit not as efficiently as the actual ‘wing’ area does). The ‘silent’ bit is nonsense, though- most of the reduction in noise from that design was due to mounting the engines on the top rear of the body, instead of slinging them under the wings. The design has the potential to be quieter than conventional tube-and-wing designs, but it’s still a long way from being silent. As someone noted, pushing a huge object through the air at high speed is going to result in a certain amount of noise.
Boeing’s been working on the design for a while, along with NASA. Unfortunately, with the McDonnell Douglas crowd running Boeing* now, I doubt it’ll be built anytime soon.
*into the ground
“Concorde?”
Can you say “Space Shuttle?” Now there’s a design by committee that was oversold and over-promised to too large a constituency.
The quote that Brian uses contains that very Blairite, cant noun, “stakeholders”. Complete giveaway.
I think that you are unnecessarily negative. There’s nothing wrong with people supporting or camaigning for silent aircraft – it’s unlikely to be built if less economic than current solutions.
In any case, even if if cost more to build, operate and service than conventional aircraft, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be economically attractive. Presently, airport capacity is under-used because of restrictions on night flying due to noise. So very expensive new airport and transport capacity is built which would not be necessary if airports could operate round the clock with quiet aircraft. The aircraft might cost more, but the overall cost of operating services could be reduced.
Many years ago, I briefly worked at BAe as a student when they were building the first BAe 146 ‘feederjet’. This aircraft could operate from very short runways and was very quiet (the quietest of all jets) as it used 4 small engines rather than 2 larger ones. Initially it was not a success partly due to higher operating costs than other aircraft (4 engines cost more to service than 2, amongst other factors), but it later became a sales success because it was adopted as a freight carrier by companies like TNT which needed to move airfreight overnight – and only the BAe146 was quiet enough to be allowed to do this. It also was used, for example, at London City airport where its quietness and ability to use short runways was ideal. Unusually in those days, the BAe 146 was purely funded by BAe – no public investment.
We should approve of people looking at new ideas. The nature of such things is that they get people thinking even if they are subsequently abandoned or hugely amended
This design reminds me of an article I read about an American designer back in the 30’s who came up with something very similar. He too used the body of the plane to help generate lift, and also claimed it was much safer in the event of a crash.
I think prototypes were built, but he got squeezed out by the more established aircraft manufacturers, who were wedded to the wing and tube concept.
For the life of me I can’t remember this chap’s name. Any ideas?
They’ve been looking at designs like this for years. There are huge technical issues and also some psycoholigical ones from the passengers and the aircraft companies. People and the airlines *like* the way aircraft look at the moment. A blended wing would, as others have said, bring potential fuel savings and efficiencies, but it wouldn’t really fly any faster.
Like with SSTs there’s a paper study on these things emerging from the aircraft manufacturers every couple of years. I’m not expecting to see one in the air any time real soon now.
Anyway, environmental lobbies be damned, a silent aircraft would bring huge benefits to airlines and airports, especially those stuck in the middle of residential areas with serious constraints on night flights.
JK, I suspect that you’re thinking of Jack Northrop who developed the flying wing bomber (YB-49 iirc) and got beaten down by Consolidated and their allies in congress and DoD in favor of their B36. I’ve heard tell that civilian versions might have been done had the aircraft actually made it into series production for the USAF.
Thanks, I don’t think it was Northrop, simply because that name is quite well known. I had never heard of this designer, who was working in the 30’s, so his designs were quite revolutionary for the time. His argument was that because his design was so much better than all the rest they made sure he was squished; I don’t know if that’s true of course.
There is already a blended wing: B-2
Recessed engines in fuselage cleaver placed can improve outside noise but probably at expense of fuel eficiency, passenger space and passenger confort.
Efforts into airframe design, namely the lift generated from airfoils (aka wings), will help reduce engine power requirements. But the real source for noise reduction on aircraft will come from engine design, not airfoils. When you have hot gas exiting the rear of a turbine at anywhere from 3 to 10 times ambient pressure, you are going to get a shock and that will produce noise.
I have been designing gas turbines for the better part of 2 decades, and this campaign is great PR for any engine company, but its not going to result in any appreciable noise reduction. Engine companies already dump several billion dollars in research to improve performance.
This is at best a figurative load of smoke being blown up someone’s “afterburner”
Surely we would only need to worry about the ‘silent’ aspect when the aircraft is below 10-15,000 ft. To have an aircraft capable of a silent approach and landing at Heathrow would be an incredible boost to the airport’s capability, given that the airport has to close between 11 pm and 5.30am due to local builtup area noise restrictions. Thus it would also undoubtedly lead to a significant boost in employment in at Heathrow, as it becomes a 24 hour airport.
John K, the name you are looking for is Burnelli.
See http://www.aircrash.org
Sorry, couldn’t make this a link.
Mike
Thnaks for that, it was bugging me for a while.
It’s been very interesting reading about Burnelli’s designs. I was intrigued by the story that FDR killed his project because one of Burnelli’s backers was a supporter of Wendell Wilkie. I can quite believe it.
Strangely enough there was a TV programme last night and a radio programme this morning about how FDR dealt with Stalin. Both pretty much came to the conclusion that he was a naive fool. I wouldn’t dismiss out of hand the idea that he vindictively crushed a superior aircraft design out of political spite.
Given that there is good evidence that he deliberately allowed the Pearl harbor attack to go ahead, and kept Admiral Kimmel in the dark about it, and then had him removed from his command for failing to prevent the attack, I’m getting the feeling that FDR was a thoroughgoing shit.
John K – I’m no lover of FDR, but to claim that there is ‘good evidence’ that he knew of the attack and did nothing is suprising. Could you direct me to this ‘good evidence’?
Regarding the BWB design – wouldn’t the passengers at the extremities be subjected to rather extreme motion when the thing banks to turn? Seems to me that human factors would discount this design.
Sean,
I’m no aerodynamicist, so I won’t argue your point. But if you look at the website you will be struck by the language of the 1941 report, that the Department would never enter into any further discussion of this design. It sounds like a closed mind decision, which in turn implies that someone high up decided it had to be so.
The “lifting body” design does work. I saw a TV programme about the F15, which showed an Israeli plane which lost one of its wings. The lift of its body and other wing was enough to get the plane home and land safely. You don’t get that from a conventional design.
As to FDR’s duplicity over Pearl Harbor, I recommend “Day of Deceit” by Robert B Stinnett. Using declassified sources, he has shown that American cryptanalysis of Japanese diplomatic and naval traffic from 1940 onwards was excellent.
FDR was no fool, and knew that when he stopped supplies of oil, steel and other strategic materials to Japan because of their invasion of China, war would surely follow. Admiral Kimmel was set up to fail as CINCPAC. Intelligence analysis collated in Hawaii was routed direct to Washington, bypassing him. He was forbidden from sending long range air patrols into the north west Pacific, even though he knew that was where an attack had to come from. He was not told that the Japanese carrier fleet had sailed in November 1941, even though, contrary to the official cover story, they did not keep radio silence.
I don’t actually object to FDR’s plan to force Japan to attack America first. It made sure that America would go into the war united and determined to win. The point here is that if he could set up Kimmel to take the rap over Pearl Harbor, there is no reason to believe he wouldn’t have given Burnelli the shaft because he was being backed by a political rival. Washington DC must be the most political town on earth. As the saying goes, if you want a friend, get a dog.