- 3512 - ION ENGINE AIRPLANE - are on the horizon? Ion Engines could work to make silent, solid-state aircraft. Ion engines are also the best technology for sending spacecraft on long missions. They’re not suitable for launching spacecraft against powerful gravity. They require minimal propellant compared to rockets, and they drive spacecraft to higher velocities over extended time periods.
---------------- 3512 - ION ENGINE AIRPLANE - are on the horizon?
- Ion thrusters are also quiet, and their silence has some scientists wondering if they could use them on Earth in applications where noise is undesirable. Powered flight is noisy. Helicopters make a horrible racket, and screaming jet engines can make life near an airport almost unbearable. Even small propeller-driven aircraft are noisy.
-
- What if ion engines could be used instead of these louder propulsion systems, at least in some applications where noise is an issue? This could help aviation achieve zero environmental impacts.
-
- Flight of an airplane with solid-state propulsion. Solid-state propulsion systems have no moving parts, so they’re very quiet. The power for flight comes from electro-aerodynamics, where electricity moves ions and provides propulsion.
-
- In 2018 engineers demonstrated the first-ever sustained flight of a plane with no moving parts in the propulsion system. The aircraft are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions.
-
- They demonstrated the concept with a 2.26 kg (5 lb) glider with a 5-meter (16.4 ft) wingspan. The wing is strung with wires like horizontal fencing. Lithium batteries in the fuselage supply current to the wires. The batteries supply a positive charge to the wires along the front and bottom of the wing, while wires along the trailing edge of the wing act as negative electrodes.
-
- The unique battery system supplies 40,000 volts of electricity to the positive wires. The positive charges strip electrons away from air molecules, ionizing them. The newly ionized molecules are then attracted to the negative electrodes at the wing’s trailing edges.
-
- This polarity creates the ionic wind that forces air around the wings, creating lift and thrust. As the ionized molecules travel to the negative electrodes, they collide with million of other air molecules, propelling the aircraft forward.
-
- Advanced air mobility is an aviation ecosystem that envisions small, electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft operations in urban areas. The problem with that scenario is noise: communities won’t welcome additional noise. Ion electro-aerodynamics (EAD) could alleviate that problem.
-
- EAD systems have no moving parts, so they’re nearly silent. The silence benefits several potential missions. Example missions enabled by silent EAD propulsion include those near noise-sensitive urban communities, or time-critical delivery missions at night (example for critical medical supplies) when community opposition to noise is most severe.
-
- Ion propulsion has a drawback. It generates a low initial thrust. In space travel, this isn’t a problem. For example, NASA used a powerful conventional rocket to launch their DART mission from Earth because conventional rockets develop enough thrust to reach escape velocity. But once DART left Earth and its gravity behind, it used an ion drive for propulsion.
-
- Novel multi-stage ducted (MSD) EAD thrusters, in which multiple EAD thruster stages are enclosed inside a duct, will be used to increase thrust enough to enable VTOL operations.
-
- VTOL EAD thrusters use box-shaped components that produce the thrust. These aircraft might fill other niches:
-
----------------- The aircraft would enable package delivery missions in noise-sensitive areas or at night, where operations would otherwise not be allowed due to community opposition.
-
- While EAD propulsion limits aircraft size at first, subsequent iterations could be larger, more powerful, and carrier heavier payloads, including passengers.
-
- This effort would be in support of the long-term goals (1) to build and fly an MSD-powered aircraft, and (2) to assess the applicability of MSD thruster technology to other use cases, including intra- and intercity passenger transport.
-
- Passenger transport is where the technology could pay off. There’s an enormous amount of air travel in the world. Collectively, air travel emitted 1.04 billion tons of CO2 in 2018, including passenger and freight. That accounted for about 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. New technologies like EAD propulsion could help with that.
-
- There’s a long way to go before EAD propulsion becomes a reality beyond quieter drones. Going from the basic principle to something that actually flies was a long journey of characterizing the physics, then coming up with the design and making it work. Now the possibilities for this kind of propulsion system are viable.
-
March 20, 2022 ION ENGINE AIRPLANE - are on the horizon? 3512
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ---
--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------ jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Monday, March 21, 2022 ---------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment