There has been some interesting commentary on the article “Climate change is real and denial is not about the science,” by Texas A&M professor Andrew E. Dressler and professor emeritus Gerald R. North. The article was published in the San Antonio Express News Opinion Section, on Sunday, October 6, 2013.
Three decades ago science and government policies did not have the public’s attention that they have today. They did not immediately connect the two subjects at first glance. But today, climate change and other global warming related issues have believers and deniers alike agreeing that things are different than they used to be. The article hits the nail right on the head. My contribution addresses alternative modes of transportation to reduce heat islands in densely populated urban areas with a high degree of vehicular traffic.
For the most part, ordinary people see the reality of inundations, flooding, heavy downpours, and melting polar ice as “a thing of nature,” something that we all somehow have to contend with as we would with the changing of the seasons. And that’s that. End of discussion. Policy implementation is perceived by most people as something the government does. And if and when its implementation is announced, and it eventually takes place, the public expects that “it better be good.”
The article asks, “So why is there such a disconnect between what science says about climate change and the public debate?”
The ADRIANA Helicopter Project
Fifteen years ago I met Dr. Lagoudas at A&M. He was conducting Aerodynamics advancement seminars at the time and I had the chance to introduce to him to my ADRIANA gliding helicopter project. What does this gliding helicopter project have to do with the thought provoking article? Just bear with me.
Helicopters burn a lot of fuel and they are doubly more polluting than cars are. Why? They don’t glide and no governmental rules are there to enforce their fuel efficiency rules if any.
What motivates
me and others about the gliding helicopter issue is the stark difference with traditional
helicopters. As traditional helicopters don’t glide, they spend twice as much
fuel keeping the aircraft in the air for the flight’s duration. That’s an awful amount of fuel to waste. If they could glide during the horizontal
part of the flight, which is the main portion of any trip a helicopter
undertakes, it would be a significant savings in fuel. The helicopter then would be as economical as
the (Piper or Cessna) light planes.
If a successful gliding helicopter is built, the aerodynamic science and its technology are presently available, but manufacturers would have to consider a design that includes significant changes to the present helicopter configuration. Manufacturing and government policy implementation would not be an issue. What is needed then is to spread the word. Inform the public. And something that is way overdue: Promoting the new technology throughout the industrial establishment and particularly throughout academia.
Critical predictions made by climatologists regarding the rising sea levels due to polar and glaciers ice melting are cited in articles written by the two A&M professors. In those scientific reports, all coastal infrastructure, that is roads, highways, underpasses, bridges, surface and underground subways, will be submerged under feet of water by the year 2050, give or take a couple of years.
Gigantic and extremely expensive installations, instrumentation and structures costing trillions of dollars to build and install will be lost forever. The National Geographic makes no secret of horrific and catastrophic inundation scenarios.
Governmental policy for rebuilding levees and other structures appears as an effort in futility. Unrealistic plans attempted for bond issues to finance desperate solution projects would be doomed from the start. Rebuilding then would definitely be out of the question.
At precisely this point in history, it would be handy to have a gliding helicopter available. An economically priced and fuel efficient aircraft that would need no roads to get us where we want to go.
But not just
any old helicopter would do, and why not?
It will have to compare in its performance with today’s commuter’s car.
To sum up:
Road construction geared for six lane highways goes hand in hand with the manufacturing frenzy of cars and trucks that grew ten-fold during the last century.
Car emissions from fuel burning fumes plus the energy plants dripping grime of smog clouds show pollution at its worst as they push global warming further.
Polar ice caps melting are steadily rising ocean levels and atmospheric warming wreaks havoc on climate change.
The threat to low land and infrastructure of coastal areas is proving to be the real deal with “Katrina”, “Sandy” and recently “Haiyan” in the Philippines,
The Municipal bond Investors scare is not imaginary. And buyer’s cold feet to new bond issues for re-building destroyed roads, highways, underpasses and bridges, make them realize that they are looking at trillion dollar items.
Since help from the government is a dead issue, a commonsense public consensus would inevitably turn to science and the media to cry “We need to find us an alternative to the commuter car before it kills us all.”
Helicopters don’t need roads, but are awfully expensive to run. Because they don’t glide like planes do.
Helicopter manufactures haven’t produced a gliding helicopter yet: and why the hell not?
There’s no room to add a wing to traditional helicopters configurations. A wing is needed to glide. Then it’ll have to be an altogether new design to get helicopters to glide.
Just adding any old wing to the helicopter won’t do. It’ll have to be an efficient wing to do the job right.
Johann
Bernoulli to the rescue. Four hundred
years ago the Swiss mathematician said “pressure
decreases as velocity increases in a fluid flow” and that statement that
was true for birds had proven true for the wings of airplanes.
Can Bernoulli’s wings be made more efficient? To do the job needed for a gliding helicopter?
Sure they can. It will be a matter of adding some new features to the wing. For instance pressure would decrease further if velocity were to increase farther. Bernoulli would agree with that.
And wings will get even more lift if at the airfoil’s trail end a downwash flow was added,
How to arrange to reconcile all these elements to work? It is a matter of design. For which our scientists and engineers are pretty good for the job.
The efficient wing will have to be small enough to fit helicopter, allowing room to accommodate the aircraft engines. They will have to be mounted on top of the wings in order to speed up the velocity of the wing’s upper flow,
The downwash would be easy to produce by placing a propeller at trail end of the wing’s airfoil, and facing it down.
Can efficient wings be made even more efficient? Sure they can.
Leonardo De Vinci and Otto Lilienthal knew how to utilize the bird wings design when it comes to cumbered airfoils.
The Physics Law of conservation of mass will insure that air will rush-in to fill the cumber’s vacuum as it develops hence adding lift to the wing’s airfoil as it glides.
Surprisingly aircraft manufacturers, so far, have not taken advantage of efficient wings fuel saving design.
For instance, they continue to install the aircraft engines on the wing’s underside. Reason? The unions request to provide easy reach to the engine for maintenance mechanics and airport’s service and easy access for inspection personnel. But all of these considerations can be addressed, one by one, with a little patience an a little ingenuity.
Until next time!
QUADRA
A brief description of the aircraft.
Quadra is an aircraft that can transport two people safely. It looks like an helicopter and can be used as daily routine commuter vehicle.
Quadra in contrast to a traditional helicopter is sustainable. And the economic consequences of adopting Quadra as a commuter vehicle will show unprecedented fuel / kWh savings.
Helicopters have been around for a hundred years. They still wobble. Quadra's new version is more stable.
An unusual helicopter configuration, Quadra uses four rotors to lift up in the air instead of the traditional single rotor. Quadra's configuration has wings! Why?
Let’s get a look at the traditional helicopter and see how it works on a trip from point A to point B..
When a helicopter starts up at point A, clearing its service ceiling, it is ready to fly out on an horizontal path to point B where it will descend.
What happens during its horizontal flight is about the same as what happened during its take-off. The helicopter, in order to remain elevated up in the air for the duration of the trip. It has to depend on its engines to stay up, because helicopters don’t glide. They don’t have wings. And that is the main issue here. That is why they have to burn a great amount of fuel in a flight that most other aircrafts do by gliding instead of being sustained up in the air exclusively by the power of their engines, at a rate of 12 to 18 gallons of fuel per hour.
That is the big difference with Quadra. Quadra, does not have to burn that much fuel to maintain the aircraft in the air because Quadra can glide.
Now, 12 to 18 gallons per hour is sort of expensive when it involves a long trip such as 500 miles or more. For instance a trip between Dallas and New York, or Dallas to Los Angeles.
On the one hand we would have the people who adopt Quadra because of the amount of fuel saved. On the other hand we have an elite of customers of Helicopter operator service, and although they are in a minority, they are a valued business component of the economy. So this quick comparison clearly favors the adoption of Quadra by anyone in need of cost-efficient air transportation.
About Quadra's wings (Efficient Wings)
Quadra wings are not just the ordinary wings of any ordinary aircraft. Quadra wings are efficient wings and they are named so, not only because of the patent application, but because they are modeled and positioned in an specific way so they can take advantage of the settings of the rotors. The rotors are set with their centers eight feet apart from each other forming a perfect square. The rotor’s centers are therefore at the four corners of that perfect square.
To visualize what is happening with the air flow, while the aircraft is flying. See sheet #5 of the drawing set.
Let’s look at the rotors from the side of the aircraft. And starting at the front rotor (extreme left), observe that its flow channels from front to back. Now, the channeled flow gets in the upper part of the wing therefore increasing the velocity of that air mass. The Bernoulli principle states:
“The pressure decreases as the velocity increases in a fluid flow."
Then two things happen due to the principle: one lift vector can be claimed by virtue of the wing's airfoil shape and a second lift vector can be claimed due to the increased velocity of the air mass at the top of the wing by the channeled flow.
As the channeled flow continues its way front to back, it encounters the back rotor and then its flow combined with the channeled flow creates a “downwash” The downwash effect is created by pushing the combined air flows down over the wing's trailing edge. Hence, by virtue of the Action-Reaction principle a third lift vector can be claimed.
Further on, a fourth lift vector can be claimed when air will be rushing in to fill the vacuum created during flight by the “cambered” shape of the efficient wing's airfoil. There's a schematic on the drawings set, page five.
Then in sum, the installation of an efficient wing, warrants the claim of a total of four lift vectors that will be pushing the aircraft upward during its flight.
The Efficient Wing is designed with the installation of solar panels covering the entire upper surface of the wing, contributing in this manner with a given number of kilowatts to the battery that feeds that aircraft four electric motors in the case of an electric propulsion version designed for the aircraft.
As summary considerations of the fuel saving systems and devices designed for Quadra, we can state that compared to the fuel efficiency of a traditional helicopter, Quadra can operate at an approximately one eighth of that. Therefore, if the average fuel expense for the traditional helicopter is estimated in about fifteen gallons of fuel per hour, Quadra would do the same work with only about two gallons.
Note:
It is understood that the energy consumption would be based on the aircraft designed for electric motors or internal combustion engines.
Available are a complete series of AutoCAD drawings and schematics plus a scale model of the aircraft.
Prepared by John D. Romo, MS ME 2002 City College of New York, School of Engineering. The City University of New York. U.S.A.
