(Press-News.org) Tomorrow's aircraft could contribute to their power needs by harnessing energy from the wheel rotation of their landing gear to generate electricity.
They could use this to power their taxiing to and from airport buildings, reducing the need to use their jet engines. This would save on aviation fuel, cut emissions and reduce noise pollution at airports.
The feasibility of this has been confirmed by a team of engineers from the University of Lincoln with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This forms part of the Research Councils UK Energy Programme.
The energy produced by a plane's braking system during landing – currently wasted as heat produced by friction in the aircraft's disc brakes - would be captured and converted into electricity by motor-generators built into the landing gear. The electricity would then be stored and supplied to the in-hub motors in the wheels of the plane when it needed to taxi.
'Engine-less taxiing' could therefore become a reality. ACARE (the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe) has made engine-less taxiing one of the key objectives beyond 2020 for the European aviation industry.
"Taxiing is a highly fuel-inefficient part of any trip by plane with emissions and noise pollution caused by jet engines being a huge issue for airports all over the world," says Professor Paul Stewart, who led the research.
"If the next generation of aircraft that emerges over the next 15 to 20 years could incorporate this kind of technology, it would deliver enormous benefits, especially for people living near airports. Currently, commercial aircraft spend a lot of time on the ground with their noisy jet engines running. In the future this technology could significantly reduce the need to do that."
The University of Lincoln's research formed part of a project that aimed to assess the basic feasibility of as many ways of capturing energy from a landing aircraft as possible.
"When an Airbus 320 lands, for example, a combination of its weight and speed gives it around three megawatts peak available power," Professor Stewart explains. "We explored a wide variety of ways of harnessing that energy, such as generating electricity from the interaction between copper coils embedded in the runway and magnets attached to the underside of the aircraft, and then feeding the power produced into the local electricity grid."
Unfortunately, most of the ideas weren't technically feasible or simply wouldn't be cost-effective. But the study showed that capturing energy direct from a plane's landing gear and recycling it for the aircraft's own use really could work, particularly if integrated with new technologies emerging from current research related to the more-electric or all-electric aircraft.
A number of technical challenges would need to be overcome. For example, weight would be a key issue, so a way of minimising the amount of conductors and electronic power converters used in an on-board energy recovery system would need to be identified.
INFORMATION:
The project was carried out under the auspices of the EPSRC-funded Airport Energy Technologies Network (AETN) established in 2008 to undertake low-carbon research in the field of aviation, and was undertaken in collaboration with researchers at the University of Loughborough.
END
Many Pennsylvania homeowners are falling behind on mortgage payments, according to recent real estate figures released by CoreLogic. Pennsylvania's foreclosure rate was approximately 2.6 percent in November, compared with 2.35 percent for 2010. Pennsylvania 90-day mortgage delinquencies are on the rise, too, increasing from 5.46 percent to 5.76 percent over the same period.
Homeowners throughout central Pennsylvania are having an especially difficult time making timely mortgage payments and avoiding foreclosure. The Harrisburg-Carlisle area suffered a 5 percent increase ...
WASHINGTON, February 23, 2012—The Council of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) unanimously issued two resolutions at its February meeting in response to the suspension of the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District No. 1 (TUSD). The resolutions addressed specifically the suspension of such courses and urged also the repeal of Arizona HB2281, which amended the Arizona Revised Statutes Relating to School Curriculum and led to the questioning of such courses.
The action to suspend courses and teaching activities related ...
Birds in eastern North America are picking up the pace along their yearly migratory paths.
The reason, according to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers, is rising temperatures due to climate change.
Using migration information collected in eBird, a citizen science program database containing 10 years' worth of observations from amateur birdwatchers, assistant professor of biology Allen Hurlbert, Ph.D., and his team in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences analyzed when 18 different species of birds arrived at various points across their migration ...
High profile drunk driving cases like those involving actress Lindsay Lohan have brought nationwide attention to a problem that has been worrying North Carolina lawmakers for years -- how do you both fairly punish drunk drivers for their actions and keep drunk drivers off the road in an effort to reduce drunk driving accidents?
"Laura's Law"
With the recent passage of "Laura's Law," a North Carolina statute that dramatically increases the penalties facing repeat drunk drivers, the state's legislature has shown a desire to keep repeat DWI offenders ...
University of California, Berkeley, chemists are reimagining catalysts in ways that could have a profound impact on the chemical industry as well as on the growing market for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Catalysts are materials typically metals that speed up chemical reactions and are widely used in the synthesis of chemicals and drugs. They also are employed in automobile catalytic converters to change combustion chemicals into less-polluting emissions and in fuel cells to convert water into hydrogen.
The problem with catalysts, however, is that chemical reactions ...
Few people want to consider their own mortality, so it can be difficult for some to ponder the issue of estate planning. Even so, everyone -- from the very rich to those with much more modest asset holdings -- will benefit from a comprehensive estate plan that dictates how and where their property should go after they are gone. It is never too early or too late to get started on an estate plan, but an ounce of estate planning prevention is worth way more than a pound of cure. Taking steps now by drafting a will, trust, living will or health care directive can keep your ...
America's divorce rate has maintained an average of about 50 percent for first-time marriages for several years now. There is one demographic that has seen a sharp rise in its divorce rate, though: the so-called "baby boomers." Couples over the age of 50 are now divorcing more than twice as often as they did back in the 1990s, and now one in four marital splits results in a "gray divorce."
How Are Late-Life Divorces Different?
Couples who have been together for 20, 30, 40 years or more are intrinsically linked in countless ways. They likely share ...
NEW YORK (February 23, 2012) – The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) announced today Sumatra's first ever successful sentence of an illegal orangutan owner and trader in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia.
The seven-month prison sentence is only the third for Indonesia, despite orangutans being strictly protected under Indonesian law since 1924.
Although there have been over 2,500 confiscations of illegally held orangutans in Indonesia since the early 1970's, the first actual prosecution of an illegal orangutan ...
A jackknifing 18-wheeler truck poses significant danger to not only the truck driver but to anyone sharing the road. It is essential for drivers to take safety measures to avoid disastrous results. It is also important for operators of passenger vehicles to take extra precautions when driving near tractor-trailers.
Briefly, a semi-truck jackknifing accident occurs when a commercial truck driver loses control of the rig and the back of the trailer slides out from behind the truck forming an L or a V shape. In the process of rotating around the tractor, the trailer will ...
Boulder, CO, USA – A recent American Geosciences Institute (AGI) workforce evaluation estimates that by 2021, 150,000 to 220,000 geoscience jobs will need to be filled. The AGI report notes that at current graduation rates, most of these jobs will not be able to be filled by U.S. citizens.
Citing great concern about the acute need for well-trained, well-educated geoscience graduates to fill the geoscience workforce, Geological Society of America President John Geissman is calling for colleges and universities to recognize the value of strong, adequately supported geoscience ...
