Wait aren’t all airplane wings bid inspired?
If you listen to the actual talk the bird they are talking about is an albatross and they are simply saying that to improve efficiency you need to make the wings longer and slimmer but then the plane will not fit in current aiport gates so they are working on folding wings.
Do they flap?
Depends how bad the turbulence is.
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Yes actually.
(They fold like a Navy carrier plane so they will fit at existing airport gates.)
Neat! But not quite the ornithopter I was hoping for.
Wait, so what has been inspiring wings up to this?
Bumble bees.
Bumble bees are actually inspiring wing designs now. For a long time our best theories on aerodynamics couldn’t explain how Bumblebees could fly. Given the relative mass and wing size the bumble bee they couldn’t explain how a bumble bee could fly.
In the last decade or so they figured it out after putting enough bumble bees into wind tunnels. Bumblebees generate additional lift by creating little vortexes in the air. So now wing designers are trying to incorporate that effect into their designs.
Is this for real? Or a continuation of the meme?
How many blades do you have to add to a turboprop before it’s promoted to an open turbofan and touted as a major new innovation?
Mentour Pilot did a video about the CFM RISE open fan engines a few months ago, they’re somewhere between a turboprop and a geared turbofan. Able to cruise at turbofan speeds, but much higher bypass ratios like turboprops. They’re not technically new, but they’re possible now due to material advances. Pretty cool concept.
Based on my image search engineering, the answer to your question is 2.
Based on my one semester of air breathing propulsion that I took 25 years ago, I’m guessing there is more going on inside the turbine part of the engine that both allows sustainable fuels that current turbofans can’t and also allows compression ratios at lower fan speeds that allows an open fan with fewer blades. Again, I barely passed air breathing propulsion back then and haven’t used ANY of that knowledge since, so I’m mostly talking out of my ass.
I’ve seen turboprops in museums and on the internet with around six or eight blades. When I looked on the Wikipedia page for propfan engines, which seems to be another name for an open turbofan, the distinction seemed to be mainly how the blades were shaped (like propellor blades or turbine blades) and how tightly-integrated everything is (you can swap the propeller out on a turboprop).
I don’t think the number of blades is really important. After all if you just keep adding blades eventually you would get to a point of diminishing returns. That’s around four blades which is why most only have four blades, unless they’re made out of incredibly light material.
So if you have a lot of extra blades there probably is some additional engineering going on to make use of those extra blades in some way.
I was meaning that the blade count and detachability was the difference in definition between turboprop and propfan/open turbofan, not that it was necessarily the thing making the engine more efficient.
Plot twist: And they’ll still pack their passengers like sardines.
Aviation peaked with the Spruce Goose, AKA the Birch Bitch, AKA the H-4 Hercules. Been downhill ever since…
Never heard it called the birch bitch.
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Ohh ee ohh!
Higher for hire
Hell yeah the wood plane
To me “next generation” and propellers just don’t mix, but I know nothing. Just want my jetpack.
Mentour Pilot did a great video on these open fan engines a few months ago. They’re somewhere between a turboprop and a turbofan. They’re better than traditional turboprops in that they’re able to handle higher cruise speeds like a turbofan, and they’re more efficient than turbofans due to a higher effective bypass ratio like a turboprop.
Rocket designs are worm(-with-diarrhea)-inspired!!
That’s a great description!
Thank you.
I much prefer it to the crude ‘flying cocks’ one.
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I guess this is why so many boeing airplanes have been falling out the sky nowadays. They forgot and accidentally based their aiplanes on land dwelling vetrebrates.
Lol.
Lead engineer: “oh did you say bird, okay I thought you said bear.”
I think it was a bee. After all everyone knows that bees can’t fly.
So, they are building a DeHavaland-Canada Dash-7 ?
Yes, frozen gas powered Dash-7!
You can pry my aging Bombardier Dash 8 from my COLD DEAD WINGTIPS.
So not the picture in the thumbnail but a generic jet
