Airbus has unveiled a bird-like conceptual airliner design | Hacker News Reader

Airbus has unveiled a bird-like conceptual airliner design

airbus.com

34 pointsbjoko18 comments

Christ, that's ridiculous. I love it.

Actually a pretty smart design; raptors' spread primaries provide considerable extra lift. It probably can't be built as depicted without some pretty impressive materials science work and maybe a novel discovery or two, but that's okay; it isn't intended to be built as depicted in the first place. I'll be interested to see if anything comes out of it over the next couple of decades.

1. Wingtips — many dissimilar winglets will create different wingtip vortices. Are few smaller vortices better than one big?

2. The centre of gravity seem to be off

3. Yaw control - I believe it will have to be synthesized by fly by wire, as there are no prominent rudder

4. Wingspar???

5. Chassis — gonna be behind the centre of mass? It still looks to me way to narrow for a plane with such long wing.

6. High wing design — should have lots of cargo space at expense of passenger fuselage volume

7. Quad engine? — why not 2?

> Quad engine? — why not 2?

Because thrust is proportional to mass flow times delta v. But power is proportional to mass flow times delta v squared. So the way to increase efficiency is to increase the mass flow as much as possible. A limiting factor is the prop/fan diameter <--> ground clearance. See the 737 MAX. But more prop/fans means more engines. And the complexity costs that come with that. Hence the popularity of two engine airliners.

I think there is a realization that with hybrid electric designs, you can have one engine + battery driving four prop/fans. My read on the depiction is an aircraft with one engine and four props.

And this racing stripe i feel is pretty sharp.

It's interesting how a propeller design would be quieter. I always associated those types of planes with noise. Is the noise mostly from the engines and not the propeller blades themselves?

It's not just any propeller:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar_propeller

Where's the rudder? How do they propose to control yaw without a rudder? Perhaps those long winglet-feathers can be modulated for yaw control?

The article does mention that the feathers would be active control surfaces, so yes.

It's at the back, where birds keep theirs too.

Doesn't flap the wings though...

tl;dr It's not an actual design.

"While not intended to represent an actual aircraft, Airbus’ “Bird of Prey” is based on realistic ideas – providing an insight into what a future regional aircraft could look like."

“Our ‘Bird of Prey’ is designed to be an inspiration to young people and create a ‘wow’ factor that will help them consider an exciting career in the crucially-important aerospace sector,” explained Martin Aston, a senior manager at Airbus.

Martin Aston should quit his job at Airbus and get a job at Aston Martin. Martin Aston working for Aston Martin only seems fitting, right?

I don't know, it seems backwards to me.

This press release looks like an Onion article

Yeah, it's basically concept art with some hand waving so we can pretend that it's in the realm of eventual possibility.

It does look cool though. :-)

Do you want ornithopters? ...because this is how you get ornithopters.

(This makes the Dune fan in me happy.)

Read the title as "Airbnb has unveiled..", and got pretty nervous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com