Sky Whale II... feasible?

RecoveringYuppy said:
Current planes carry around a lot of rechargable batteries now.
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RecoveringYuppy said:
It's more efficient to throw energy away than recover it? Especially when electric motors turn in to to generators so easily? The overall realism of this particular plane may not make sense, but if you've got electric motors you also have electric generators. If it ever makes sense to power a planes engines by electricity it's very likely to be guaranteed that using them to recover energy will also make sense.
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They carry around tiny banks of batteries, appropriate for small housekeeping tasks (emergency hydraulics). Nothing comparable to the energy you'd get from a cruising-speed wind turbine during descent.

Electric systems have to balance generation and load. This crazy plane claims to have generation capacity (solar) sufficient to run the engines at full cruise speed, and then---during descent, when the engines are closer to idle, and the solar capacity is still there, you have additional generation capacity?

Real-world energy-generating systems have somewhere to put their generated power. Either you're tied to a huge grid which can adjust easily to new inputs, OR you've got a bunch of batteries, OR you buy a big resistor (residential-scale off-grid people call it a "diversion load", utility-scale versions exist and I forget what they're called) and you just waste energy heating it up. (Or, preferably, you turn down the generator to match the load. Which works great for fossil/nuke/hydro but not for solar or wind.)

I humbly submit that "we're going to hoist 100 tons of rechargeable batteries into the stratosphere on an airplane for the sake of being able to charge them during descents" is utterly delusional. You'll waste more energy hauling the batteries around than you will gain from their one-recharge-cycle-per-flight.
 
ben m said:
Let me rewrite the article very slightly.
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Bang on the money.

However, if you were to go back in time, kidnap the Wright Brothers and shove them in Business/1st class on an Airbus A380.....

All the major aircraft manufacturers look to the future and release design concepts so in some respects they are as guilty. Eg:

http://www.airbus.com/innovation/future-by-airbus/

http://www.airbus.com/innovation/future-by-airbus/concept-planes/

The A380 was an enormous gamble and required huge developmental costs. That wasn't the only factor, there were many; for example airports had to be capable of accommodating the design. I think Airbus is due to break even on that model sometime in the next year.

Certainly huge strides are being made particularly in engine design and we'll see far more efficient engines within the next 10 to 20 years, but one has to always remember that all these commercial companies must make a return on their designs. Ultimately this means that an end product has to come out of a costly and lengthy design and development process.

Rolls Royce are currently looking at a development of their Trent XWB engine with their Advance and UltraFan Programs.

Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) materials are beginning to be used in non-rotating 1st stage Turbine areas and GE have successfully trialled CMC turbine blades. http://www.geaviation.com/press/military/military_20150210.html

The CFM Leap engine will incorporate CMC turbine blades.

I did some work in my final year as a student some 20 years ago on SiC (Silicon Carbide) and SiN (Silicon Nitride in the form of SiAlON) ceramic materials for static components in high temperature applications with a focus on high temperature corrosion using a burner rig that ran on commercial jet fuel.

I don't think we'll get away from the tube with wings and power-plants dangling off them for a while, but the evolutionary process will eventually produce something that we consider outrageous today.
 
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Nihilianth said:
I don't think craig4 is planning on a fiery ball of flames as his destination. Though, I could be wrong. I don't know craig4.
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Panicked passenger... "Oh my God... we've lost an engine. How far can we go on just one engine!"

Ron White... *sips his scotch*... "All the way to the crash site."


:p
 
ben m said:
They carry around tiny banks of batteries, appropriate for small housekeeping tasks (emergency hydraulics). Nothing comparable to the energy you'd get from a cruising-speed wind turbine during descent.
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So recover a small amount. If one of your engines is an electric turbine why not use it? And airplanes need a lot of electricity now, which is generated from the engines and the APU. This design (if you can call it that) just moves some of that around because it's got at least one engine capable of doing both.

ben m said:
This crazy plane claims to have generation capacity (solar) sufficient to run the engines at full cruise speed, and then---during descent, when the engines are closer to idle, and the solar capacity is still there, you have additional generation capacity?
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I missed that. Where does this claim to be entirely solar at cruise? Every description I've seen says hybrid engines, with solar used to start them (and presumably to reduce or eliminate the current parasitic generators).
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Here's another link that might be a better description of this design. No mention of being entirely solar at cruise or that the engines are ever fully electric powered that I can see.

http://www.tuvie.com/awwa-sky-whale-concept-plane-by-oscar-vinals/
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Well, there's
The aircraft’s engines could use both fuel to burn in the engine’s core, and electricity to turn the turbofan when the core is powered down.
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That suggests that the aircraft can operate in an electric-only mode, though I suppose it's conceivable that 2 engines would be operating in electric-only while the other two would be in dual-mode.

Weirdly, there's also
with an active air flow control system – eccentric turbine inside the wing near to the fuselage – which could redirect the laminar air flow and turbulences and at the same time produce electric energy for the hybrid engines (4 oversize electric-fuel engines).
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which sounds like they're talking about running a wind turbine to generate electricity to drive 4 other turbines to generate thrust. If it works, it violates conservation of energy.

On a separate issue, since I'm quoting anyway:
The disposition of the wings and its architecture (with integrate engines) separated from the airplane’s fuselage like a security measure, that in a hypothetical fatal case of an emergency landing, these could auto-break up to reduce the damages on the passengers section.
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When I'm on an airliner in turbulence (I'm looking at YOU, DIA), I am not thinking, "I hope they designed it so it's easy for the wings to pop off."
 
dasmiller said:
Weirdly, there's also ...
which sounds like they're talking about running a wind turbine to generate electricity to drive 4 other turbines to generate thrust. If it works, it violates conservation of energy.
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There is no need to assume that. Is there something this guy's background I don't know about that suggests he's prone to woo? You have to read in stuff that's not there to get a violation of conservation of energy.

Based on what's actually there you could assume that solar cells are there to take the place of current parasitic generators and the APU. With the "wind turbine" like things taking over things currently done by APU and RAT, possibly only when there is an interruption in solar

I'm assuming these things are meant to fly only in the day, which makes me wonder if this could possibly be commercially viable even if it became technically viable.
 
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From the Behance page. Seems pretty clear.

"Six engines, one of which is a mixed engine (wind generator/electric engine); the airplane could generate all the necessary energy to feed its superconductive engines (only will need “external” Hydrogen fuel to start –engines & TLMA system- and in specifics moments in the fly); and for the principal systems and subsystems. At the same time it could generate an extra energy that could be storage in the down side of the plane (on the airplane’s cargo bay) to be collected with special electrical storage trucks in the airports, to use after in the same airport or for industries, homes or other electric vehicles.
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RecoveringYuppy said:
There is no need to assume that. Is there something this guy's background I don't know about that suggests he's prone to woo? You have to read in stuff that's not there to get a violation of conservation of energy.
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But the text did say that electricity from the "eccentric turbine" would be fed to the other engines. Seriously, I don't know of any way to make that make sense. It'll always lose energy in the conversion steps (wind ->rotation, rotation->electricity, transmission losses, electricity->rotation, rotation->thrust). They'd be better off simply letting the eccentric turbine spin freely and doing without whatever electricity would have gone to the other engines.

And even better off by making it smaller. Maybe RAT-sized.
 
Not really my area, but if you're looking at a reduced emmsions, fuel efficient replacement for the standard airliner, aren't we a bit closer with hybrid airships? A few of those have flown or are in development.
 
By studying the concept art I figured out where all the energy is coming from. in photo #1 the airplane has two distinct shadows. It is meant to fly on planets with double Suns.
 
dasmiller said:
But the text did say that electricity from the "eccentric turbine" would be fed to the other engines. Seriously, I don't know of any way to make that make sense. It'll always lose energy in the conversion steps (wind ->rotation, rotation->electricity, transmission losses, electricity->rotation, rotation->thrust). They'd be better off simply letting the eccentric turbine spin freely and doing without whatever electricity would have gone to the other engines.
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At the link I provided it says the purpose of that turbine is primarily to control turbulence and pre-process intake air for the turbines.

Here's another link that repeats that (and may also be the page that ben_m referred to?)

https://www.behance.net/gallery/AWWA-Sky-Whale-Concept-Plane/11891085
 
Nihilianth said:
Well, yeah. I get that. But does the specific design of of the flinger-like winglets on the "sky whale II" actually do anything more than the normal winglets on planes today?

Those winglets serve the same purpose as the winglets on the ends of spoilers on race cars. It keeps the vehicle steady on the road surface at fast speeds.
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This is not the primary purpose of these winglets, either on a plane or on a car. They are designed to reduce wingtip vortices.
also, Drag reduction by wing tip slots in a gliding Harris' hawk, Parabuteo unicinctu.
GLIDING BIRDS: REDUCTION OF INDUCED DRAG BY WING
TIP SLOTS BETWEEN THE PRIMARY FEATHERS.
Just never saw anything even like those fingers on so much as a concept other than for the hypothetical Sky Whale II design.
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Really?
They are quite common. Lear had them on some models of their jets back in the 70's. The original concept dates back to the 19th century.
But plane wings don't flap up-and-down like eagle's wings.
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Again, this sort of "fingered" wing is much more prevalent on large, heavy soaring birds such as eagles, vultures and cranes. Since the design reduces wing vortices and thus drag on a rigid wing, such as when a bird is soaring not flapping, it makes sense that it can achieve the same when applied to the rigid wing of a large, heavy plane.
 
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I don't think the creator is "prone to woo". I think he's an artist who enjoys thinking about and drawing futuristic-sounding airplanes, and who doesn't know thing one about physics, energy, or engineering.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
At the link I provided it says the purpose of that turbine is primarily to control turbulence and pre-process intake air for the turbines.
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The actual quotes (it appears in two places) are
with an active air flow control system - eccentric turbine inside the wing near to the fuselage - which could redirect the laminar air flow and turbulences and at the same time produce electric energy for the hybrid engines
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and
To control the laminar flow and turbulences, redirecting the flow to intake turbofan engine
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both of which are so oddly worded that I wonder if they're mis-translated. "Turbulences?"

Little (if any) of the air going to the main engines would go through the "eccentric turbines" first, maybe it's driving some kind of boundary layer control system in the area ahead of the main engine inlets? (wouldn't it make more sense to simply mount the main engines out of the disturbed air, like most airliners?) I'm still not seeing a way that this makes any sense, but maybe I'm just not understanding what they're trying to say.
 
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