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Musical Wings Reduce Aircraft Stall Risk
notwrong writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that a Qantas engineer has found a way to help small aircraft avoid stalling at low speeds: pumping sound through the wings. He found that music also works, having tested Spiderbait and Radiohead (nice choices; Spiderbait apparently works better)."
I would think that playing the B-52's, U2, Eagles, Foo Fighters, a Flock of Seagulls, or Jefferson Airplane would be more appropriate, then again, who am I to say...
"All we can say is that Spiderbait performs better than Radiohead," said Mr Salmon.
Only for the typical Auzzie who thinks tie-dying is fashionable.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
they don't play 'Crash and Burn' by Savage Garden.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
from the fake-plastic-airlines dept
I'm sorry, I don't get it. Enlighten me?
Sleep is futile.
... you are the wind beneath my wings.
If anyone has ever witnessed the Dragostea din Tei music video by Ozone you know that some fat beats can keep even the worst Romanian boy band in the air.
Be afraid.
From now on, every small aircarft owner must pay royalties to the RIAA. Otherwise RIAAAF rules of engagement will not apply.
As a pilot, I think it's just fine. If you don't like it, don't use it. Oh by the way did you know that Boeing use a Linux supercomputer to help design their aircraft? And all the new in-flight entertainment systems are based around linux? And, oh, guess what, some new nav computers use.... you got it, Linux.
Suggest you quit your job and start living in a cave, to avoid linux. Oh, maybe you already do, troll.
filling wings with rock doesn't seem like such a good idea.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
I've seen this troll before...
Mr Salmon said that if they could make small aircraft perform better at low speed, it should be possible to build planes with smaller wings, which would be lighter, less thirsty, and thus cheaper to fly.
I can see the headlines already- "Airplane crashes due to smudged CD"
More seriously, have they done studies comparing the frequency of the sound vs air pressure/density? It's possible that other bands would perform better at altitude- maybe they could finally find an appropriate place to play Wings cd's...
I'll bring my air guitar.
Will the plane explode if you blast some Necrophagist, Psycroptic, or Nile?
Of course, Qantas. Always looking for new ways to keep their crash-safety record intact.
Thats why the helicoptors played Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, it was to stop them stalling! You see, them yanks come up with all the best stuff. Except for sliced bread cuz that was invented here in good ol'Blighty.
If added noise makes the flight smoother, isn't this dither?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
So what do you do if ya want complex and sofisticated system calls that the Integrity-178B doesn't provide? Well, use another real-time os on top of Integrity-178B or make it part of Integrity-178B but run it in user mode. So all the drivers are really in user mode in such a system. This all is needed so that no single program if corrupted can hang the system. (Trust me you don't want an airliner's computer to freeze with a BSoD or with a Oops!-Kernel Panic while in mid-air).
Another side note, FAA actually has a concrete limit on the failure due to software. So something like no more than once out of tens of millions of flight hours a plane full of people is allowed to completely crash and burn because of a software problem and have everyone on board die a horrible and painfull death and that would be perfectly "ok" with FAA. So the requirements to certify a system (OS) to fly a plane are very stringent. Linux doesn't even come close. It might be good enough to play music though...
These broken wings
And learn to fly again, learn to live so free
He found that music also works, having tested Spiderbait and Radiohead...
We appear to have stalled, and will now commence emergeny procedures by playing Radiohead through the wings of the aircraft.
While you are now no longer going to die, you can listen to some music for people who wish they could just.
Thank you and have an unhappy day.
is he the one with the +5 smack the shit out of one's own karma hammer?? because if it is...
:)
HE STOLE IT FROM ME
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I may be talking out of my ass here, but don't bird wings do the same thing when their feathers ruffle as air passes over them? Wouldn't this ruffling be the same as the vibration described in the article?
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
Trolls live under bridges, not in caves.
This is a well known phenomenon. The question is how much energy is being used to get this reduction in drag?
Where does this energy come from? Either APUs, or more powerful main engines... which are heavier... which means bigger wings...
spiderbait.com.au MP3s
How about Pigs on the Wing?
Probably a similar phenomenon to adding air blowers on wings. By blowing air out of the top of the wings and into air flowing over them you can have the flow stay attached on the wing much, much longer. This reduces the cross-sectional area of the turbulence and greatly reduces the induced drag.
I suspect that both methods work by adding kinetic energy to the flow, but IANAAE.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
Aphex Twin was commissioned to do a track for Virgin Airlines, which ended up being called "Aphex Airlines", but it ended up being rejected because he decided to end the track with what sounds like a plane's engines cutting out, followed by a nose dive (and something resembling praying). It's also far from melodic (it's damn close to a detuned radio) and had virtually no chance of being accepted for any commercial purposes. Sort of like the Family Learning Channel spots in "Rejected", you just get the feeling he didn't WANT this to get off the ground.
Wouldn't it be ironic indeed if it helped keep planes in the air?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Your post about aircraft OSes and in-flight system crashes reminds me of an hilarious old thread I remember reading here.
Here's the link to the topic that talks about the OS in the f22.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
In-flight enterntainment an navigation. Thanks for the info, but it doesn't contradict the grandparent post in any way.
"it can be mathematically proved that it is correct (does what it is supposed to do and nothing more or else)"
How does the RTOS actually know what it is supposed to do? I would think that some actual application code that runs on it would define what the system does.
If the this Operating System lets you run Turing-complete code, won't it run into the halting problem when trying to find out if that code does something correct or not? I don't think you can mathematically predict what any computer system will do if it is allows you to some basic things, like run real programs!
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Yes, it seems music may get us to the stars after all!
I'm no expert in this area, but a few things that should probably be mentioned: The linux kernel is modular. It is very easy to strip away the "fat" and only run the small portions of it you actually need. A navigation system isn't going to need the driver for my wacom tablet, or subsystems to control Speedstep with, for example. And also, there are I belive several tweaked real-time versions of Linux, which are even MORE stripped down, and do exactly the sort of things you are describing...the kinds of things you want a RTOS for.
I'm not tryong to say Linux has its place everywhere. Its very possible, liekly even that this OS you have just mentioned is still superior to Linux for this application in a dozen different ways. I just felt the need to mention that two of your main points don't neccesarily apply to the Linux kernel.
People who write this kind of software can probably explain to me a multitude of reasons why it makes no sense at all to even use Linux as a starting point, and i trust anyone working on something so mission-critical to know what they're doing.
once you go slack, you never go back
mod paarent-Up
..i am offended by an entrenched aerospace and defence contractor which relies on congressional cronyism to keep its position that regularly spouts ant-embedded linux FUD [with the terrorists use open sourse ! the russians will get us etc. in places where linux is actually appropriate competition i might add] astro-turfing slashdot with obvioulsy in correct arguments.
valid rebuttal to a the green hills astro turfing!
while i dont believe a stock linux kernel should be allowed to fly a plane or even co ordinate control systems...
so mod parent up and try to mod that clown down.
You've never listened to Kid A, have you?
If you were talking about Coldplay I'd agree completley, but you should listen to Kid A before saying that about Radiohead.
It's nice when science can agree with the things we already know to be true. Music is a great way to overcome more than stalls in aircraft engines. The right song can bring you right back to the moment you first heard it, make time stand still and everything seem alright until the time it ends (and you want to hear it again).
The right song can melt a woman in your arms, make a bad date suddenly go right, turn a night of monotony into a night of romance. When I turn on that Barry White and the moment is just right, the lights go down and...
oh wait...
sorry, forgot this was Slashdot. This kind of talk has no place here.
*ducking*
M
My cousin had a similar idea 20 years ago. We attached bees to a plane's wings and the buzz really helps.
Besides, with enough bees we could even get VTOL.
The only problem is making all bees fly in one direction. We are trying to tame them and teach them to act like eskimo dogs, but it's been hard.
The flower-ahead-of-the-plane trick works for some time, but they get bored real fast. OTOH, when my cousin walks ahead of the plane, they fly it for hours trying to get to him.
Maybe it's like that duckling thing they made a film about. Oh, it's so cute!
... does it run on linux?
I have no idea what you are talking about. Dithering applies to signal *processing* (input -> process -> output). The presented concept doesn't mean "sampling the original wing flapping, adding a signal and applying the end result again to the wings", it just means "adding a signal to the wing". You don't even have the means to start fresh with the "applying" part, since you can't control all of the wing movement.
Could you elaborate your idea?
RTFA. The article is talking about a stalling wing, Bernouli's principle of lift and laminar flow, not a stalling engine.
So whenever they build a new airport, you have to recompile the kernel? And you have to check the airport data by hand to make sure it has no trojans. You always do that right? And and and... you only agree to tell air traffic control your position if they agree that if they tell anyone else your position, they have to quote the entire GPL too. Enough trolling for now.
OK, I'm really stopping now.
April Wine "Crash and Burn"
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
I never heard of Spiderbait until just now, because I suspect that at the age of 33 that I've unwittingly moved underneath a rock, but thanks to some... um... research, I find that they are pretty good!
Any other examples of small-aircraft-saving music that you guys enjoy?
Aside from colloquial usage, it is an oft-used mechanical engineering term.
heh, in one breath they say how it could improve safety by making current plane designs have a larger margin for error under stall conditions. But then at the end they suggest that with this technology installed a plane might need smaller wings. If you make the wings smaller then you remove that larger safety margin and get a plane no safer than they are now. Like any new safety tech, once people start to expect it to work it stops improving safety. Like anti-lock brakes. Saved many lives when people still drove as if they weren't there, but now people drive even more recklessly and know that the anti-lock will probably save them if they have to slam stop in a hurry.
The idea is not to predict what the system can be used to do, but rather what each individual system call can do. There would not be a way to invoke a system call to do arbitrary things. If a user level program implemented something that ran into the halting problem, that would not keep the kernel from servicing other user level programs. I believe the primary trade-off of this type of kernel is probably performance, which in this scenario is certainly worth sacrificing (up to a point) for stability.
...how about an improved stall-onset-warning device that hits the pilot upside the head and yells "AIRSPEED, YA FOOL!" in his/her ear?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
No, this particular point is valid -- not specifically applied to Linux, but in general.
Proving algorithms has been part of *real* computer science for decades, and is part of what separates the actual "computer science" folks from the programmers (and the real computer science universities from those which are actually just glorified trade schools).
I'm saying this as a programmer; I don't prove my algorithms personally, but I respect those that do.
We tried this years ago, but the plane would only stay up for 17 minutes and 2 seconds, wierd...
mathematically proving a kernel if possible is irrelvant as you will be running prgrams on it which will invalidate howveer complete the kernel is.
Imagine that you have a 3 line program that computes the absolute value of some input x say {if(x>=0) abs=x; else abs=-x; return abs;}. Ok do you think you'll be able to write another program that will verify that this program works correctly?
You would look at it and perhaps see that it has one branch. We give it inputs such that both paths in the branch are taken and then you look at the output and see if it is what you want it to be, and _also_ you look at all the rest of the memory and make sure that it didn't change. Maybe give it some extreme values, like the maximums and minimums and then also look at output and the _whole_ memory.
Then can you do the same for a 'for' loop that computes a dot product. You just give the program the known input then at every iteration look for some loop invariants and also check the rest of the memory that shouldn't be affected that it is indeed not affected and then check the output.
Also this means that the code itself has to be written in a certain way in order for its correctness to be checked easily. That means that a lot of nested 'if's are not a good idea, so they try to reduce the branching as much as possible and modularize the program. It is the burden of the software developers to submit their code for certification and pass before it is accepted by FAA or DoD.
This actually can be reduced to the SAT problem, which runs in exponential time (but there are ways to take shortcuts in some of the cases).
I would think that some actual application code that runs on it would define what the system does.
First though before you even let any application code run you have to make sure that no single appliation will ever take control of the memory and cpu for more than it's allowed share. That is what the separation kernel does. You run this small provem and scrutinized piece of code (note: you also need specialized hardware to make sure it will work) that makes absolutely sure (up to a margin of error) that no application will take more than its share of resourses. So if one application crashes it will not crash the system, instead the rest of the machine will continue to work. So that is why sometimes they will run two RTOSes on top of each other with the first being Integrity-178B that will make sure the other OSes on top are partitioned and separated and allocated only a given share of resourses.
The point of having a kernel that is proven to work right (up to a margin of error) is for it to prevent other programs to hog or take control of the cpu or other resourses. Here even drivers are considered external programs. Then of course each application provider, which might be different than the OS developers, will have to submit its application to be certified.
Copulation with a horse, while hilarious, doesn't make for good pRon!
Goggles - do nothing.
Wouldn't this be much more useful for removing ice from wings? THAT would be a nice safety feature because the pilot could just hit play and ice would fly of his wings. I think I saw once that they were testing to produce a shock wave somewhere in the wings structure to shake of the ice with the blast. I guess you don't really want to bang the wings with anything. I would if it was the last resource, but doing it with music would solve this more elegantly.
A popular aftermarket wing mod is vortex generators... little pieces of metal or plastic carefully positioned at stretegic intervals along the top of the wing skin, usually just a little ways aft of the leading edge. This induces vortices in the airflow to help keep the boundary layer across the top of the wing from separating off from the surface, and thus lowers the stalling speed by some small amount.
...and yes one of the very first times I took off with music playing just had to be with Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride, as I was haulin' ass down the runway thru rotation and climb-out (ST:First Contact reference).
I am a pilot who flies my own small plane and prefer to simply keep my airspeed up to avoid stalling the wings, and keep the music in my headsets. An iAudio X5 mp3 player fed thru a set of Lightspeed Thirty 3G ANR headsets while you're flying is a great experience.
We should get the military on this right away. Pump nothing but "The One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple People Eater" through the wings, and our planes will be unstoppable!
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
Don't forget John Denver, you insensitive clod!
I for one welcome our singing wing aircraft overlords.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
So, there might actually be a use for Winger's music after all?
'Rora
80's Cartoons Central
In effect the wings are flapping, on a very very small scale.
This is very impractical (surprise!). What if you are in a region of flight where only the generated sound was keeping your plane in the air? Then you have an electrical failure. You fall like a brick. The ignition systems are already isolated from the main electrical system and fully end-to-end redundant specifically because of concern over electrical failures.
Also, it would pose engineering problems. Aircraft like the C172 I fly have wings that are specifically designed to stall in a very particular way. It's wings stall from the inside out, so that aileron control is maintained as long as possible. In fact, despite my repeated attempts, I've never been able to get into a stall deep enough for the ailerons to stop working. The point is that sound transducers would change all of this high precision engineering. What would happen if a single speaker went out? Would the plane go into an irrecoverable barrel roll?
Also, stalls really aren't that big a deal if you know your ass from a hole in the ground. The people who get into trouble with stalls are idiot doctors who bought their fancy Cirruses and flying lessons at the same time and never give flying the respect it truly deserves. But that is another story.
...Sparks is right out.
S CMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000740D.01._
Music: do the lyrics make a difference? Or no instruments at all? Please don't use the phrase "Flying in on a wing and a prayer" or the Intelligent Design folks will get the White House to fund Faith-Based Aviation. Oh, wait, that's what the Space Shuttle has become...
-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post
Why do you think you hear the humming when the flying saucers come down?
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
Maybe Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper shouldn't have taken that break between songs ...
"Hey where's Tommy?"
"He got sucked into the turbines during the last round."
You're so right, you never have to do anything like this in windows. I mean, you never have to do any complex editing of registries, or ini/inf files... I mean hell the windows resource kit isn't full of command line utilities to fix the problems only the gui can cause... right?
Sell some more stupid somewhere else.
>turn a night of monotony into a night of romance.
You mean monogamy?
Now we know why all the flying saucers have that bizarre humming noise! Outstanding!
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
Uhm, maybe not, watching the Corrs is not likely to stall anything...might even speed it up to the discomfort of your "wing man"...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Would this work with model airplanes?
1) To the first poster: Indeed, I seem to remember that fly thing vaguely, but was unaware of it when I posted the comment. Your memory is amazing. As a side note, and however worthless a fly might be, causing suffering is definitely a bad thing (TM).
2) To the poster of the link: It seems it was indeed that page at MIT. Thanks for the pointer. I bow to your searching powers.
It's kinda like a dejà-vu sensation, only it's something I knew, rather than something I've seen.
Spooky!
... High Speed Dirt ?
Latewire
Nope. In high-budget mission-critical embedded environments (which are what we're talking about here), the programs getting run will themselves have been proven and desk-checked by multiple teams. Thus, so long as the syscalls do what they're proven to do, and the proofs of the software correctly and accurately reflect the proofs of the syscalls, you've got a complete system which will do exactly what it's proven to do (so long as it remains in an environment in which the proofs are valid, of course).
This is NASA-type stuff; it's an entirely different environment (with different requirements) from almost all other commercial development, and is vastly more expensive to do -- but it makes sense for cases where large numbers of lives or billions of dollars of property ride on the correct operation of your sofware.
As the plane plummets towards the ground, the terror of the passengers turns to extreme agony as the dischordant blast of bad karaoke revibrates through the cabin's PA system in the pilot's last ditch effort to regain control of his craft.
Using smaller wings at a higher angle of attack could make the plane lighter, but would overall need more energy to fly, as the "lift" would be directed back more.
You typically see these conditions only on slower craft (small private aircraft), or on large jet-liners at approach and takeoff. Other craft (like jet fighters and such) typically have more than enough engine power to compensate - some of the craft even use stall to their advantage (and a lot of computer processing) to allow the aircraft to do some amazing maneuvers for evasion. So, really, the concern is on craft where the speed is lower. So I ask:
What ever happenned to the Kline-Fogleman wing design?
For those of you who are unaware, back in the mid-1980's, two gentlemen by the names of Floyd Fogleman and Richard Kline came up with a special wing design, which essentially looked like the profile of a "standard" airfoil, but with a notch on the underside of wing (they also found that the wing worked well flipped upside down!). It utilized drag at low speeds to create extra lift in stall conditions. They received a patent for the design, and tested it on R/C models they designed and flew. They had plans to try a full scale test, but in the meantime they published a book about their design (which they also showed on 60 Minutes as well as in an article in Omni Magazine). The book was entitled "The Ultimate Paper Airplane" (ISBN 0-671-55551-0), and contained details on the airfoil design, why they believed it worked, details on the patent, pictures of their R/C aircraft tests, and - of course - instructions (including various models which could be photocopied from the book) to fold various paper airplanes based on the wing design.
So - what happenned to this design? Where did these guys go off to, and why have we not seen anything more about their airfoil? One thing which may have limited its application was the fact that it did create more drag than a regular wing (fuel consumption?), and it wasn't very good at fast flight speeds. But for lower speed aircraft, this shouldn't have been a problem. If there are any aircraft designers or whatnot out there who know more, please post - I always thought the wing design was interesting, and have always wondered what had happenned...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Negative on the Nope.
In a separation kernel, different user applications can be "proven and desk-checked" at different levels of certification (DO-178b, CC, MILS, etc) because they __cannot__ affect each other, hence the name _separation_ kernel. In a way you were right, because the whole idea of a separation kernel is to _reduce_ the cost of certification so the project isn't so "high-budget".
The only time your comments are applicable is in cases where the systems are either running on non-separation kernels or in cases where the operation of _all_ the user level applications are as critical as the kernel.
Heck no, it's not dither. First of all, you can't make connections between concepts just because they share vocabulary words in common. That only works in the social sciences.
In this case, the noise added adds energy to the airflow. And it doesn't make the flight smoother, it just makes the airplane stall at a lower airspeed. Most importantly, however, it's a purely aerodynamic affect, having nothing to do with quantization.
However, I applaud you on getting modded up on what has to be one of the least informative or insightful posts I've ever seen. That, in an of itself, is certainly interesting and perhaps worth a different kind of mod. Unfortunately, there are no points given for fooling moderators.
I had in mind a system running a single userlevel application, where that application itself is as critical as the kernel.