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Musical Wings Reduce Aircraft Stall Risk

Posted by samzenpus on from the fake-plastic-airlines dept.

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)."

4 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As a pilot by madaxe42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Musical wings by jcater · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Musical wings by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >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...

      Of course, if the effect they were discussing was a reduction in drag you may well have a point, since reducing the low speed stall of the wing was the actual effect I guess you missed the mark a little.

      But of course, this is a well know effect. The sound produces surface turbulence in the zone where the laminar flow breaks down, and helps to keep the flow attached to a slightly higher angle of attack.
      Generally 'tripwires', surface steps, and small turbulator fins are used for this effect, however they operate at fixed positions. This system is a little more general, although comes at an energy (and indeed drag) cost.

      An interesting approach would be to detect the development of stall and hit the vibration generators then, which would work great except it is very hard to re-attach flow once it breaks down, and very hard to detect stall before the flow detaches.

      All in all, someone with a media connection has decided to ride a bit of common knowledge, good on them.

  3. Vortex Generators by Nick+Driver · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    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. ...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).