Silly birds.

Amra

Amra

Diabloii.Net Member
Silly birds.

Can we not design an airplane engine that will survive bird strikes?

A passenger jet with at least 153 people on board tonight crashed landed into the Hudson River in New York.

The US Airways Airbus A320 came down after hitting a flock of birds, disabling two of its engines.

- Timesonline
Click to expand...
If the birds are the cause, I have to wonder what can be done about it. I know the plane was not the largest, and that mechanical things don't like having birds stuffed into them (generally speaking), and that engineers have been working this issue for decades.

The OTF is resourceful group. What can we do about this?
 
Johnny

Johnny

Banned
Re: Silly birds.

The problem is money. You could easaly design engines that could eat whole people without problems but it would increase the fuel consumption and it would be a permanent cost increase for a somewhat rare problem.

Take the TF34 for example. It's nearly 40 years old but you could could feed it torso size, chunks of metal and it would just spit them out.
 
krischan

krischan

Europe Trade Moderator
Re: Silly birds.

Modern jet turbines run at extremely high speeds to reach their incredible power output and efficiency (120 kN per turbine even for a small jet like the A320) and they only survive that because they are perfectly balanced and of an extreme quality. The inner turbine blades are made of monocrystal metal and even though they are just 10 cm long, they cost 20,000 € per blade. Running a turbine at maximum power (e.g. when starting) stresses it so much that the most tiny imbalance blows them up. If anything of a certain size reaches the core of the turbine, it will destroy it, like a piece of metal or a bit of bird mesh.
 
W

whitey

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Silly birds.

This idea might get shot down rather quickly, but what the hell. What about putting a conical mesh of some sorts in front of the intake of the engine. It wouldn't have to be a tight mesh, just tight enough so large birds couldn't get through it. This way the birds would be swept out of the way of the intake. It would probably have to be replaced after each impact but screening isn't exactly expensive.
 
P

PFSS

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Silly birds.

Amra said:
Can we not design an airplane engine that will survive bird strikes?
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure they are, it's just there is a limit to the size of bird and the number of strikes that can be reasonable designed for.


 
S

stillman

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Silly birds.

Those poor, poor people who fly. Sorry, but I don't feel much sympathy for people who drown in their swimming pools or crash in their luxury cars or die when their mansion burns down.

OT: Btw, I hope gas prices double overnight. Those poor poor drivers.
 
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