Speakers Reduce the Risk of Stalls

I found this interesting story posted over on Slashdot and thought it
would interest the group.

a
href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-sound-idea/2005/08/18/1123958182084.html"http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-sound-idea/2005/08/18/1123958182084.html/a

Sorry about the link problem. The correct link is:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...?oneclick=true

Sorry about the link problem. The correct link is:

You might try just copy/pasting the story? I ain't registering for yet
another website...

Thanks!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" writes:

You might try just copy/pasting the story? I ain't registering for yet
another website...

I'm annoyed by "registration required" links too.
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:...und-idea&hl=en

--kyler

Try this from Bugmenot.com for smh.com.au
account name: ernestq
password: word456

But here's the article anyway:


Just a sound idea to keep an aircraft up
By Richard Macey
August 19, 2005


There have been singing birthday cards, singing cowboys and even a singing
detective.
Next could be the singing aircraft, or at least planes with singing wings.

A Qantas aerospace engineer has found a way to make small planes safer and
more efficient by turning their wings into flying speakers that can beat out
a tune.

To stay aloft, a plane must keep air flowing tightly over its wings. This is
not difficult in mid-flight, but can be tricky when travelling slowly for
take-off or landing,

To fly slowly, pilots raise the nose of the plane, says the engineer, Ian
Salmon. But if it is raised too high, air flowing over the wing can become
"detached" from the wing surface. The plane then risks stalling and possibly
crashing.

Mr Salmon said engineers had known since the 1940s that blasting a plane's
wings with sound helped keep air flowing over the wings. The concept had
been demonstrated by placing speakers in a wind tunnel and bombarding model
planes with noise. However, Mr Salmon conceded yesterday, building giant
speakers at airports was not only impracticable, it would anger local
residents who are already annoyed by aircraft noise.

Instead, he has successfully experimented with covering the upper surface of
an aircraft wing with thin film-like panels linked to wires. When the wires
are electrified, the panels vibrate 400 times a second, producing an audible
buzz.

In wind-tunnel tests at the University of NSW, "singing wings" were able to
"fly" at much steeper angles - up to 22 degrees above the horizontal,
compared with the normal maximum of about 17 degrees.

"It gives you more of a safety margin, and more time for the pilot to react
in an emergency, such as an engine failure on take-off or a sudden wind
gust," Mr Salmon said.

In his research, which is part of his aerospace engineer degree at the
university, he even pumped music through his wing speakers, looking at how
well the hard-rock Australian group Spiderbait made a plane fly, compared
with the ethereal British band Radiohead.

"All we can say is that Spiderbait performs better than Radiohead," said Mr
Salmon.

The next step would be to test the singing wing on an unmanned aircraft.

Mr Salmon said that if they could make small aircraft perform better at low
speed, it should be possible to build planes with smaller wings, which would
be lighter, less thirsty, and thus cheaper to fly.






"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:CEFNe.264532$x96.54133@attbi_s72...
Sorry about the link problem. The correct link is:

You might try just copy/pasting the story? I ain't registering for yet
another website...

Thanks!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article CEFNe.264532$x96.54133@attbi_s72, Jay Honeck
wrote:

You might try just copy/pasting the story? I ain't registering for yet
another website...

http://www.bugmenot.com/

It's your friend. Put in nearly any web site (in this case,
smh.com.au), and it'll give a name and password to use.

--
Garner R. Miller
ATP/CFII/MEI
Clifton Park, NY =USA=

Sorry for the login issues. When the story was first posted, it did not
require a login/password.

Raul Ruiz wrote:

Sorry for the login issues. When the story was first posted, it did not
require a login/password.



I live in Europe and I could read the articel on the URL
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...?oneclick=true
without any need to log in or to register.

I would not be surprised to learn that access restrictions to certain
specific websites may be restricted to the country where you live, and
that the rest of the world has unhindered access.

Anyhow, I know of certain movie preview websites that monitor TCP/IP
addresses to restrict access to USA residents. So be aware of TCP/IP
address monitoring!

Johan E. Mebius