Rough Wing Skins May Equal Smoother Ride

New Scientist reports “Hang on to the bumps for a smoother flight” which talks about the new technology being used to literally make your flight a “smooth one”.

THE performance-sapping turbulence of air passing over aircraft wings can be suppressed by carefully designed roughness in the surfaces.

So says a team at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in defiance of the conventional wisdom that roughness inevitably promotes turbulence. The team’s experiments could have far-reaching consequences for the aerospace industry, which spends vast amounts to reduce this costly effect.

“Turbulence is associated with increased friction drag, the resistance of a thin body when it slides past slower moving air,” says Luca Brandt, a member of the KTH team. “Delaying turbulence is important to decrease the drag.” Reducing drag would increase fuel efficiency, which would cut airline fuel bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Traditionally, minimizing turbulence has been a matter of “extremely smooth wings”, yet now the opposite is being considered. Rough equals smoother ride.

 

Well-Dressed Computer Wearing Aircraft Mechanics?

Pasta & Vinegar reports on “Wearable Computing (location-aware) for Aircraft Maintenance” describing a vest-like PDA-kit for aircraft mechanics.

…this Wearable Computing for Aircraft Maintenance, a concept for a combination of wearable computing and knowledge management with the goal to shorten the maintenance process in the aircraft industry. It’s a kind of location-aware, wearable information system meant to facilitate the access to different sources of information a technician needs during the maintenance task.

The PDA in the vest-like garmet includes a RFID scanner and tracks the movement of the wearer, as well as makes it easier for the mechanic to track part descriptions, inventory, and storage. It will allow the wearer to connect their PDA to their notebook to facilitate complex updates and computer programs.

 

Flight Guard Approved for Israel Aircraft

Israel’s Globes Online announces that MI-Elta’s “Flight Guard” airline protection system has been approved for use on Boeing 767 airplanes.

The Israel Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA) has approved the Flight Guard commercial airliner protection system, built by Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI) and Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd.’s (IAI) Elta Systems Group. Approval followed test flights of the system and certification. Flight Guard has been approved for installation of Boeing 767 passenger jets.

…ICAA director general Udi Zohar…said the fact that the military system that had been adapted for civilian use in cooperation with the ICAA was a very significant achievement, as it was the first system of its kind in the world.

IMI developed Flight Guard’s diversion flares. IMI chairman Ovadia Eli said IMI’s countermeasure dispenser system launched flares at instructions from the radar radar-based missile approach warning system (MAWS). He said the flares were suitable for civilian use, after their safety was improved and adapted to meet the threat from terrorist missile attacks on civilian airliners.

Elta developed and adapted Flight Guard to protect civilian airliners on the basis of a cabinet decision in 2002 that the system would be the first to be installed on Israeli airliners. Elta’s systems are currently installed in over 200 aircraft in 15 countries, mostly in military aircraft, but also in executive jets.

 

Boeing Dream Machine - Going Plastic

Business Week reports that “Boeing’s Plastic Dream Machine” could revolutionize the use of plastic around the world.

Inside Boeing Co.’s (BA ) cavernous development center in Seattle, the future of its commercial jet business is taking shape. That future is plastic — and lots of it. At center stage in the tightly guarded building are three huge fuselage sections, dubbed barrels, made entirely of composites known as carbon fiber-reinforced plastic…

… Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted with composites, which are used in everything from golf-club shafts and tennis rackets to giant underground storage tanks. But even the latter can’t measure up to what Boeing is creating — namely, the entire airframe of its upcoming 787 Dreamliner jet.

 

Boeing 787-10 Looking Good with New Orders

According to ATW Online, Boeing is bullish on 787-10, Dreamliner production.

After what it called “a blockbuster year for the 787,” Boeing revealed it has outstanding offers to airlines for more than 500 Dreamliners and 787 Program VP and GM Mike Bair said the airframer hopes to turn many of those offers into firm orders.Following up on yesterday’s announcement that Boeing is looking at going ahead with the 787-10, Bair was even more bullish on the dash 10, saying, “a go-ahead is highly likely.” He told ATWOnline that the company is finalizing studies on the range/payload tradeoff and that “the business case looks very attractive.”

The dash 10 essentially would have the same capacity as the 777-200 but not the performance of the 777-200LR. Deliveries would commence in 2012. Boeing also is more optimistic about a production rate increase for the 787 after exceeding production milestones and conducting structural tests that verified the pressurization level of 6,000 ft. and the aircraft’s large window size.

 

Old Air Mechanics and Pilots Never Die…

Setting an inspirational example, the Dallas Star-Telegram reports on how old timers are restoring the history of aircraft.

At age 82, Ray Neal still goes to work at Vought Aircraft Industries twice a week.

Only now it’s a labor of love that motivates Neal to get out of the house instead of a paycheck.

Neal is one of a group of retired Vought employees who still trek to their former workplace on most Tuesdays and Thursdays to do what they love to do — work on old airplanes.

Most of the retirees worked for two decades or more for the Chance Vought Aircraft Co. or one of its later incarnations, including LTV Corp. Many were pilots, navigators or engineers, often with military experience and a love of all things aviation in their blood.

“The things that really keep us involved has more to do with aviation in general than just being Vought employees,” says Neal, one of nearly 100 members of the Vought Retirees Club who work on planes. “We would like future generations to know what we did in our generation.”

The object of Neal’s affection is the one-of-a-kind V-173 — known as the Flying Pancake — an experimental short-takeoff airplane once flown by Charles Lindbergh.

Piece by painstaking piece, Neal and other retirees have spent most of the last two years rebuilding the aircraft for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. They have several more months of work left to restore the aircraft to its original appearance for museum display. They hope to show it off in Texas before returning it to the Smithsonian.

The team of old timers are sharing their passion for planes by helping not only restore the airplane’s history, but also it’s paperwork by finding or recreating drawings, manuals, and documentation about how the plane works and flies. In a way, they are recreating how it was done originally, helping to preserve the process as well as the plane. Well done!

 

Tracking the Paper Trail of a Crashed Plane

The process of determining how a plane crashed is a complex and fascinating one. You think CSI and Law and Order are riveting, think about ALL the information that has to be gone through to determine what happened to an airplane to cause it crash. Today’s planes are built with so much redundancy, and for the most part, over maintenance and monitoring within FAA regulations make most planes exceptionally safe. Safer than your car, that’s for sure.

Still, tracking the paper trail of a crashed airplane takes on a new perspective for challenge when the paper trail is gone due to a company being out of business, so explains James Bernstein of NewsDay in the article, “Plane’s old paper trail impedes probe”:

When an airplane crashes, investigators have a host of duties to perform, including one that has to be done immediately: getting a hold of the plane’s original design and specifications from the manufacturer.

But what if the manufacturer no longer exists?

Federal investigators found themselves confronted with just such a situation last week, when an amphibian - capable of operating from water as well as land-based airports - crashed off Miami Beach, killing the two pilots and 18 passengers aboard.

The 58-year-old plane - dubbed the Mallard - was built by the former Grumman Corp. in Bethpage. Fifty-nine were built, all in the late 1940s.

The plane that crashed was operated by Chalk’s Ocean Airways, which since the accident has grounded the remaining four Mallards in its fleet.

The problem for the Federal Aviation Administration is that there is no Grumman anymore, or at least, not in any form that helps the investigation. In 1994 Long Island’s largest private employer was acquired by Northrop Corp. of Los Angeles, and the combined company is now known as Northrop Grumman Corp. Since then, the Bethpage operation has all but ceased working on airframes, and its engineers, expertise and archives have all dispersed.

Eventually, they are able to track down some of the paperwork, but it is a lot of work to cover 58 years of maintenance records to help determine the cause.

 

FAA Requires 16g Seats in All New Planes

I’ve been working lately on a freelance project for stress analysis of aircraft seat designs and structures so this caught my eye as my project is part of the effort to comply with the new FAA standards for safer seats on all new planes.

Seattle Times - FAA Requires Safer Seats on New Planes explains:

After 17 years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has completed work on requiring passenger aircraft to have stronger seats, designed to increase the survivability of passengers and flight attendants in accidents.

The new rule, which affects aircraft built after October 2009, says the seats must be able to withstand 16 times the force of gravity, compared with the 9g standard in effect since 1952. Floors and the tracks the seats ride on also must be able to withstand those forces.

The new seats must undergo a battery of tests to determine their strength, similar to the crash tests that automakers must comply with to meet federal safety standards.

The new standard applies only to new planes, and may apply to planes undergoing massive refits, though it will now not be forced upon planes outside of those qualifications. Most planes built in the 1990s included near 16g qualified seats, so those are also excluded from any modifications.

 

Heavy Metal Makes Lighter and Quieter Planes

As we’ve reported recently, continued research and development is going into making aircraft quieter, and often as a by product, more fuel efficient, safer and cheaper.

According to a Wired Report, Heavy Metal Makes Lighter Planes,

Qantas engineer Ian Salmon tested wing sections covered with a piezoelectric material that vibrates when a current is applied to it. When the tone of the sound was at its most effective pitch, Salmon’s wing panel achieved 22 percent more lift than it would have without the piezoelectric hum.

Vibrating wings could be used to make planes safer, reduce wing size and provide another element of control for pilots, Salmon said. But don’t expect the wings on commercial jets to start humming away any time soon. The technique only works well on smaller planes such as light aircraft and military-style unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator.

Larger aircraft are equipped with advanced sensors and sophisticated trailing-edge flaps, which are used to change the shape of the wing during takeoff and landing. Vibrations could improve these conventional controls, but likely not replace them completely. For example, the greater a wing’s angle to the horizontal, the slower the plane can fly and thus the safer it can land. Vibrations could also eventually help engineers design planes more efficiently.

…It’s all about changing the air flow from an unstable laminar flow to a turbulent flow that increases lift, Cummings said. The vibrations change the way the air behaves when it starts to break away from the wing’s surface, sucking it closer.

 

MyBoeingFleet to Connect via Internet All Aircraft Data

JAL First Customer of Boeing’s Electronic Maintenance Tool from FLT Tech Online reports that soon Japan Airlines (JAL) will be using what Boeing Commercial Aviation Services describes as “performance-enhancing solutions for aircraft maintenance and troubleshooting that will be available via the Internet.”

Under their agreement, JAL maintenance technicians can use their normal browser to access the Structures Tool within Boeing’s hosted Maintenance Toolbox service, which is a key component within Boeing’s evolving portfolio of electronic aircraft maintenance applications. Toolbox uses intelligent documents and visual navigation methods to help aircraft technical personnel troubleshoot airplane systems and manage structural repair records, parts, and task cards.

Specifically, the Structures Tool provides 3D models for recording, viewing, and analyzing structural repairs, making use of accumulated repair knowledge, and maintaining records of repair activities for multiple fleet types. It also includes a repair history database of records that contain details of repairs and repair locations on one or more aircraft. Users can search the database for information about repairs performed in specific areas of the airplane, search for similar repairs on other airplanes in their fleet, and enter, edit and delete repair records as needed.

Engineers can access the information on JAL’s data through any Internet connection and device to monitor the aircraft’s data through www.MyBoeingFleet.com.

The goal is to bring modern Internet technology to the air transportation industy and connect content, applications and services with their airlines, as well as connect all the data and departments involved in airline flights from air service to maintenance.