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An Entirely New Class of Aircraft Arrives
fergus07 writes "Austrian research company IAT21 has presented a new type of aircraft at the Paris Air Show, which has the potential to become aviation's first disruptive technology since the jet engine. Neither fixed wing nor rotor craft, the D-Dalus uses four mechanically-linked, contra-rotating, cylindrical turbines for its propulsion, and by altering the angle of the blades, it can launch vertically, hover perfectly still, move in any direction, and thrust upwards and hence 'glue down' upon landing, which it can easily do on the deck of a ship, or even a moving vehicle. It's also almost silent, has the dynamic stability to enter buildings, handles rough weather with ease, flies very long distances very quickly and can lift very heavy loads. It accordingly holds immense promise as a platform for personal flight, for military usage, search and rescue, and much more."
And it will bring us world peace, end hunger and cure cancer.
This shows the value of issuing press releases.
Thirty years ago I was in the Propulsion & Thermodynamics group at Lockheed. One of the guys had a research project on spanwise rotor propulsion - his proof of concept used a beefed up cylindrical hair dryer rotor of the day. Yeah, you can get some net thrust, but at nowhere near the efficiency of conventional designs. There has to be a really strong reason to sacrifice all the extra fuel and weight and safety deficits when compared to better techniques. Perhaps there are niches where the tradeoffs are worth it, but that is not what I'd call "immense promise". Let's see what kind of thrust-to-weight, lift-to-drag, and thrust-specific-fuel-consumption their aircraft can produce first...
Is it April 1st, or just slashdot mods got bored?
As a pilot and an engineer... the sheer amount of bs in one article stymies the ability to say anything else!
Silent turbines? Do you know how a turbine works? Definitionally it moves amazing amounts of air (and fuel). Air movement = sound. It can't be silent.
It can "hover" into a building? Do you know how the threshold between "Hey we're just outside the window" and "oh now we're 2ft above the 3rd floor" and "yeah now our exhaust has nowhere to go" works?
It can "glue itself down to a deck of a ship"? How many aircraft have been swept off a deck of a carrier after landing? NONE! Gravity keeps them there. Sure, the engines can generate more than 1G of lift ... but if you need 2G to stick the aircraft to the ground... get a nice tether because you have one really expensive balloon!
Ridiculous.
Is it April 1?
E
Full disclosure: I am a licensed rotorcraft pilot. That means I fly helicopters. They don't have silent counter-rotating turbines (lol) and don't "stick to the deck."
Here's a marvellous 1930's ref. from Wikipedia...
http://books.google.com/books?id=xSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26&dq=Popular+Science+1931+plane&hl=en&ei=5r8JTaa6Ismr8AaNmb2iAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBzgU#v=onepage&q&f=true
So... not exactly new but probably controllable with modern computer avionics.