Be-200 er etter min mening et eksempel på en suksess som dessverre får liten omtale. Vannbombere av sjøflytypen ser vi hver sommer, spesielt i Sør-Europa. Vi har også sett Sovjets eksperimentering med wing-in-ground-effect som kalles Ekranoplanes. Martin Mars flyr fremdeles i Canada som vannbombere. De skal vel på museum snart. Vel, mulighetene er mange og det du kan lese under er interessant.
Could seaplanes be the future of transatlantic
flight?
(CNN)In the future, transatlantic flights could be smooth sailing,
literally. Rather than slamming down on a runway on the outskirts of a city
center, passengers could land on along the coast in a jumbo seaplane.
According to Dr. Errikos Levis, a researcher in the Department of
Aeronautics at Imperial College London, seaplanes could be the answer to at
least two of modern aviation's greatest burdens: airport congestion and noise
pollution.
"We can use seaplanes to move noise away from population areas and reduce
the need to have extensive infrastructure," he says.
Dr. Levis co-authored a study on the potential of seaplanes as tomorrow's
jumbo, passenger aircraft. Together with Professor Varnavas Serghides, he's come
up with the design of a family of seaplanes that could accommodate anywhere from
200 to 2,000 passengers.
Though theirs is a radically new concept design, seaplanes are in fact a
very old idea.
"Seaplane development basically stopped after the mid-40s, because they
were substantially less aerodynamically and structurally efficient than land
planes," he says.
Seaplanes, for starters, traditionally demand tip floats, a heavy
apparatus that ensures lateral stability on the water's surface but also
increases the plane's drag penalty by up to 20%. The awkward shape of the
aircraft body, particularly the V-shaped hull -- which is necessary to help the
plane navigate through water -- also traditionally added to the drag
factor.
Design basics
To reduce the air resistance incurred by the V-shaped stepped hull, the
team employed a blended wing body, where the hull sweeps upwards to merge with
the underside of the aircrafts' wings. He also decided to get rid of the tip
floats all together.
"The inboard sections of the wing itself actually provides that lateral
stability," says Dr. Levis.
The engines will also move to the top of the plane, which will help shield
them from spray ("A big problem for seaplanes," says Levis). The move will also
deflect noise so that those living underneath a flight path won't be as effected
by the engine's roar.
The bigger the better?
Dr. Levis doesn't believe seaplanes would replace land planes, and he notes
that they're still no match in terms of fuel efficiency at smaller
sizes.
"We still couldn't quite beat what the current state-of-the-art land
planes consume, especially at smaller sizes," he admits. At sizes of 800
passengers and above, however, the efficiency is on par and sometimes better
than that of current aircraft, he adds, using what he deems conservative
assumptions for the aircraft's final structural weight to determine his
calculations.
He also noted that seaplanes wouldn't be under the same size constraints
as landed planes, which are limited due to fixed runway widths. As a result, a
2,000-person seaplane is feasible, and at the larger sizes, a seaplane could
even use the more environmentally-friendly hydrogen fuel -- something
traditional aircraft can't use as easily since hydrogen takes up four times the
volume as Jet-A1 fuel.
"We can't put passengers underneath the waterline for safety reasons, so
what we found is we have a lot of empty space there, which we can use to fit in
hydrogen," says Levis.
Tomorrow's airplane?
Alas, the seaplane is not likely to take off anytime soon, even though,
says Levis, the technology is basically there.
"There'd need to be some research, but it's not like we're using
anti-gravity! The vast majority of the things we used (to design these planes)
are there," he says. Still, he imagines that if work started on it today, it
would take about a decade before the design became a reality.
"What's really lacking at the moment is the will to try something new," he
says.
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