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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)."
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.
or "Exploder" by Audioslave. :)
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...
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.
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.
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.
The singing sound that (mute) swan wings make may be an instance of this effect.
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.