The members of our forum that have wondered what new design for commuter air service might be created to replace some of the older models presently used can now view an idea from Airbus. Remember this is just an idea put into a photo to stimulate thought for future design. It will be interesting to know what you think of this concept.

Courtesy: Airbus

“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. “One of the priorities for the entire industry is how to make aviation more sustainable – making flying cleaner, greener and quieter than ever before. We know from our work on the A350 XWB passenger jet that through biomimicry, nature has some of the best lessons we can learn about design. Who can’t help but be inspired by such a creation?”

https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/news/en/2019/07/airbus-conceptual-airliner-to-inspire-new-generation-engineers.html

Well that is something new. Whoa.

I can see all the "inspired by nature" stuff transferred from A380 to A350 as the flagship has been passed down

Is this concept even feasible?

Still no cloaking device.

clickhappy wrote:

Still no cloaking device.

Emmet is reluctant to release the flux condenser for industrial use (afraid it will be used for time travel), and as it’s needed for cloaking, it’s a no-go for now.

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

This is just the Airbus equivalent of the Sonic Cruiser, a radical placeholder to make them look innovative until airlines are willing to plunk down money on the next generation of aircraft, all of which will look nothing like this.

Kahless would find such tactics dishonorable.

Nice .. looks like a bird .. and hopefully flies better than my birds!

DarthLobster wrote:

So, this is Airbus equivalent of the Sonic Cruiser, a radical placeholder to make them look innovative until airlines are willing to plunk down money on the next generation of aircraft, all of which will look nothing like this.

Kahless would find such tactics dishonorable.

This is what drives innovation. They even say that this is basically a study as to what they can learn about flight from nature. It is not intended to be a production product. To say this is dishonorable is missing the point entirely. Do you really thing the A350, A380, and any other aircraft that Airbus made didn't have any elements that were pulled from "crazy" concepts? That is how the design process works.

flash330 wrote:

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

I hear this argument all the time, and yes there's every chance the electricty generated is from fossil fuels but that can always change, whereas petrol and diesel will always be 100% fossil fuels.
Also what would you rather drive past you on the street, a clean electric vehicle or a dirty petrol/diesel?

Copy that! Also, a few years ago already, electric cars were calculated to have a life cycle global warming effect that was 50 % lower than a gasoline car. Hook up some solar panels (also with low environmental impact compared to coal) and you reduce your emissions even further.

Interesting that they chose the Union flag as the tail design, given that they have previously been quite vocal over the relationship between the UK and EU.

Or maybe the artist was a Brit!

As I pointed out in the A380 thread, the next generation of aircraft will be based on existing aircraft architectures but efficiency will be taken to the next level through different idea's in terms of energy management.
The B787 has already taken a first step with the bleedless architecture.

If you look at the A380, one of if not the most efficient aircraft in terms of fuel burn per unit of floorspace, to me it looks like a flying clothes iron.
I'm involved with innovation and I can comfortably state that if OEM's are interested in it, technology to cut fuel burn by half on something like the A380 can enter service within the next decade.

Very interesting, thanks for posting. A bird-inspired but reasonably realistic development would be a morphing wing, with thickness, camber, and twist continuously adapting to aircraft configuration (e.g., weight) and flight condition (e.g., speed and altitude).

The concept is not entirely new: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/mul ... 05-07.html

PS Did anybody notice the name of the Airbus engineer quoted in the article? His parents must have been car enthusiasts or James Bond's fans

#Sharkfin2.0

DarthLobster wrote:

This is just the Airbus equivalent of the Sonic Cruiser, a radical placeholder to make them look innovative until airlines are willing to plunk down money on the next generation of aircraft, all of which will look nothing like this.

Kahless would find such tactics dishonorable.

It was done to inspire young people in great britain to pursue a career in engineering, nothing more. They are not lying about it.

flash330 wrote:

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

I hear this argument all the time, and yes there's every chance the electricty generated is from fossil fuels but that can always change, whereas petrol and diesel will always be 100% fossil fuels.
Also what would you rather drive past you on the street, a clean electric vehicle or a dirty petrol/diesel?

I don't know about "clean energy", i mean solar pannel and wind station are not 0 impact (how the hell are they built?) Also , the biggest issue with electric, is BATTERY.

Where and how the hell are we gonna recycle them when the time comne? People underestimate the battery issue, wich are not 0 impact to make, and definetly won't be easy to recycle.

Seriously, what is even the point of these concepts? Creating a "wow" factor with purely arbitrary ideas that are not subject to any feasibility constraints or any engineering, technological, economical or regulatory realities is the easiest thing ever. Granted, 99% of people who work in PR and Marketing departments are not exactly geniuses, but even then... Hey, here is my own concept. A hypersonic airliner flying at Mach 20 with no sonic boom, with enough range to fly from Australia to Europe and back nonstop, using CO2 in the atmosphere and air pollution as fuel and zero emissions of anything whatsoever. Oh by the way, it costs $1, has VTOL capability and never needs any maintenance. How's that for a wow factor?

yabeweb wrote:

flash330 wrote:

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

I hear this argument all the time, and yes there's every chance the electricty generated is from fossil fuels but that can always change, whereas petrol and diesel will always be 100% fossil fuels.
Also what would you rather drive past you on the street, a clean electric vehicle or a dirty petrol/diesel?

I don't know about "clean energy", i mean solar pannel and wind station are not 0 impact (how the hell are they built?) Also , the biggest issue with electric, is BATTERY.

Where and how the hell are we gonna recycle them when the time comne? People underestimate the battery issue, wich are not 0 impact to make, and definetly won't be easy to recycle.

Electric energy is still much better especially for cars and there are many reasons for that. For one, gasoline does not come out of the ground like that, the process to refine it uses massive amounts of energy. Second, the efficiency of a conventional engine is horrifically low compared to the efficiency of a oil power plant. If you change all cars to electric and use the fuel they used to run to power a oil power plant you have more than double the excess amount of energy left. On top of this it is easier to do carbon capture as well as good filtering at one power plant than at millions of cars.

clickhappy wrote:

Still no cloaking device.

No, because Airbus is bound by The Treaty of Algeron.

Qapla’!

Tah Paa, Tah Beh!

As you walk up the steps to board, it is mandatory to declare "It looks like today is a good day to die"...

Look at the cut of it. Fuselage is a structural disaster, wingbox is a structural disaster. Tail is a stability and control disaster.

I guarantee there is nothing like that complete design in a wind-tunnel anywhere (although there likely are wings with feather tips on them under investigation).

flash330 wrote:

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

I hear this argument all the time, and yes there's every chance the electricty generated is from fossil fuels but that can always change, whereas petrol and diesel will always be 100% fossil fuels.
Also what would you rather drive past you on the street, a clean electric vehicle or a dirty petrol/diesel?

I'd choose the modern, clean, efficient petrol car (euro 6d) vs any electrical-coal powered car.

Is electric aviation even possible? Weight is going to be a nightmare - take a look at ground transport: any BEV is significantly heavier than competing vehicles in its class.

Tesla is still struggling with the economics of their fully electric semi truck because of the same reasons a fully electric airplane would flop today. Tesla semis need to charge, meaning less time on the road making money. Weight from batteries means less weight from money making cargo. Take for example the Alice that 9K signed a MOU for (doubt that the type will make certification, much less be delivered en masse to the airline). 60% of MTOW is batteries. The worse prospect is turn around time; 30 minutes charging for 1 hour of block time - that significantly increases turn around time.

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

And where the rare earth metals for the batteries were carved out of the earth. It is an interesting conundrum. To become more green we must strip mine the earth.

I love concepts like this. They're inspiring. Which is the point.

There's too much stagnation in the aerospace industry due to grandfathering rights as well as bean counter culture.

The aerospace industry won't make any new major leaps unless they're forced to. It's not that they're incapable of it. Quite the contrary.

yabeweb wrote:

I don't know about "clean energy", i mean solar pannel and wind station are not 0 impact (how the hell are they built?) Also , the biggest issue with electric, is BATTERY.

Where and how the hell are we gonna recycle them when the time comne? People underestimate the battery issue, wich are not 0 impact to make, and definetly won't be easy to recycle.

Au contraire, people such as yourself constantly overestimate the battery issue. Batteries from EVs thus far have:

1) performed far better than expected - initially it was supposed that batteries would need to be changed every couple of years (hence early EVs often involving some kind of battery lease arrangement with the manufacturer) but in practice they have been found to far outlast the vehicles themselves

2) proved to have a valuable second life as electric storage/buffer in buildings - many manufacturers (particularly the French who started early with EVs) are involved in programmes adding battery storage from repurposed EVs to large offices, public buildings, etc.

3) turned out to be very recyclable - they say the recovered products are better quality than when the battery was manufactured as a result of the ionising/deionising cycles allowing impurities to filter out

4) no shortage of raw materials, nor are they as "dirty" as people claim - cobalt is the one that grabs the headlines, but in fact only a very small proportion of that potentially comes from dubious sources

terrificturk wrote:

Tah Paa, Tah Beh!

Um...definitely not, to be.

Okay... When I first saw the term "biomimicry," I'll admit I had images of the onithopters of yore - the few that were able to get off the ground would "plummet with style." However, I am very intrigued by the propulsion. What kind of hybrid power plants would they be? I would like to imagine the dark patches above the wings to be built-in solar panels, providing fuel from heaven, not from hell. I have sketched similar concepts. (We would need oil back-up when the aircraft is in or under a dark could.)

I want to imagine that future generations will be able to enjoy the magic of flight as much as we all do here. Something like this design could well provide the answer. As a bonus, the passengers will have window views unobstructed by the wing.

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

Modular batteries. You'd drop the old set out and place a new one on board. This is a very well understood and long since solved part of any potential electrical Aircraft in commercial use.

Aye, very good.

So you are advocating large doors in the torque box to put them into the wings? Or are you intending to saddle up the fuselage with another XX tonnes of payload - increasing wing bending moment accordingly.

How and where to put the batteries and how to recharge them in any electric aircraft is not well understood and not long since solved.

There was another thread on this kicking around, and I ran some numbers on recharge rates - for a single aisle, assuming sufficient energy density (big assumption), you were needing to recharge in the tens (or was it hundreds) of megawatts. Per aircraft.

sibibom wrote:

I can see all the "inspired by nature" stuff transferred from A380 to A350 as the flagship has been passed down

Is this concept even feasible?

It seems to me all designs have been and are "inspired by nature".

jaybird wrote:

Nice .. looks like a bird .. and hopefully flies better than my birds!

https://www.flightglobal.com/assets/get ... emid=78309

Inasmuch as Airbus is attributing mythical traits to that, they should call it the Phoenix

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

My daily driver is a Tesla, but I have some gasoline cars too. I tell people I have three oil powered cars, and one coal powered car.

https://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/faq/2 ... -coal.html

Only 30% of US electricity comes from coal (and at the risk of sounding like an energy industry shill, that number is falling, not rising).

aklrno wrote:

I get upset when someone touts an electric vehicle as cleaner, greener, more sustainable. It depends on where the electricity comes from, and in the US at least, its mostly fossil fuels.

It's changing - surprisingly fast. In April, for the first time, more US electricity came from renewables than coal:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/renewable- ... irst-time/

While all carbon is bad, and coal is truly awful, natural gas is about one third better, in terms of CO2 emissions, than oil:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

When you factor in renewables, nuclear, and the shift away from coal, US electricity, on average, is cleaner than gasoline, and the difference is getting larger over time.

Devilfish wrote:

Inasmuch as Airbus is attributing mythical traits to that, they should call it the Phoenix

Nah, that name is already attributed to an existing design:

Wait guys the 1989 effect will kick in and kill this idea off!

Well it looks... interesting, but seeing this makes me think the only bird of prey I want to fly on is a Klingon bird of prey not some electric science class experiment!

This is what happens when the engineers at Airbus have too much free time.

Aceskywalker wrote:

Is electric aviation even possible? Weight is going to be a nightmare - take a look at ground transport: any BEV is significantly heavier than competing vehicles in its class.

Sure, I have previously shown that using components from the car industry in mass production right now you can convert an ATR 72 to all electric with faster (and possibly higher altitude) cruise, longer range and lower operational cost. Where do the batteries go? Who mentioned batteries? Why are people obsessed with batteries when it comes to something being ”electric”? The trick with the ATR example is to use methanol for fuel and run it through fuel cells producing electricity. You would use the normal wing tanks for the fuel (possibly replaced using materials better suited for methanol). Methanol can be produced in large volumes today, so increasing production shouldn’t be a concern.

/Fredrik

This thread is a good reflection of what is going on in the industry.
Nobody knows where to go next, everybody is throwing out concepts and waiting for someone to drop the trillion dollar idea.

This is much like the period leading up to the first human flight.

If you have an idea, keep your mouth shut and take a patent on it.

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

You just design the frame around the principle that, yes, a large amount of space is slaved to a removable component, specifically designed to be swapped out in a timely manner.

I just know that the aforementioned concern is literally the easiest to solve for that sort of mess. And that it's been discussed here, a few other forums, my engineering project in college, and several project studies at work. There's nothing to suggest that this somehow isn't settled.

Yeah, you design the frame around the concept of removing a large chunk of its internals - then design around that pesky thing called physics afterwards.

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

As for wing loading... Where do you get the idea that Batteries would be stored in the fuselage? You'd still need some weight in the wings to counter bending/flex moments, the further from the fuselage centerline, the better (there is a reason why Center Tank Fuel is always used first). Without fuel stored there, and with the space available that brings, that would be the most logical place.

So then you are suggesting big holes in the torque box to take batteries in and out. I'm sure the FAA and EASA would love that... as well as every stresser on the program and the aerodynamicists given the surface tolerances will be shot to hell.

I suggested they would need to be stored in the fuselage as replacing them in a structurally acceptable wing in a timely fashion is simply not viable.


-------------------------------------

A viable solution is more likely to take the form of a pumpable "liquid" - i.e. composed of nanoscale batteries. Similar buckeyball approaches have been proposed for storing H2 before and haven't hit prime time yet.

This approach would of course means existing philosophies are largely unchanged, pumpable "fuel" into a "wet" wing which is then transported via internal fuel systems to the engines for use. Dunno what a lightening strike would do for the overall system, but one step at a time.

Of course, either approach will still require airports to have access to Gigawatts of power to recharge said nanoscale batteries (or conventional scale batteries).

Amiga500 wrote:

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

You just design the frame around the principle that, yes, a large amount of space is slaved to a removable component, specifically designed to be swapped out in a timely manner.

I just know that the aforementioned concern is literally the easiest to solve for that sort of mess. And that it's been discussed here, a few other forums, my engineering project in college, and several project studies at work. There's nothing to suggest that this somehow isn't settled.

Yeah, you design the frame around the concept of removing a large chunk of its internals - then design around that pesky thing called physics afterwards.

Well we currently go around in pressurised metal or plastic tubes at 500+mph at an altitude where both the pressure and temperature are not conducive to maintaining human life and protected from this by 1mm of aluminium. The machine is propelled through the air by two (or more) more or less separate machines that are simultaneously spinning at several thousand revolutions per minute whist filled with gasses hotter than the melting point of the materials they are made from whilst being suspended from Wings that are undergoing major shock interactions of the air flowing over them and filled with flammable liquid. They are controlled by either a gyroscope so sensitive it can sense the motion of the earth whilst the aircraft is rolling or using series of satellites that use time so accurately they need to take account of the mass of the earth affecting the speed of light to triangulate the position to within millimeters. All of this is is done to a precision of minutes over several hours of flight whilst knowing winds and temperatures throughout the atmosphere and aligning to a complex supply and logistics chain so that there is an almost unbroken chain for door to door delivery allowing people to sit so comfortably and mundanely that they can complain about the quality of the champagne and noise cancelling headphones.

However if physics tells us we cannot have a removable battery then I guess it must be so...

Amiga500 wrote:

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

As for wing loading... Where do you get the idea that Batteries would be stored in the fuselage? You'd still need some weight in the wings to counter bending/flex moments, the further from the fuselage centerline, the better (there is a reason why Center Tank Fuel is always used first). Without fuel stored there, and with the space available that brings, that would be the most logical place.

So then you are suggesting big holes in the torque box to take batteries in and out. I'm sure the FAA and EASA would love that... as well as every stresser on the program and the aerodynamicists given the surface tolerances will be shot to hell.

Do birds have torque boxes?

Amiga500 wrote:

I suggested they would need to be stored in the fuselage as replacing them in a structurally acceptable wing in a timely fashion is simply not viable.

How do you know?

Amiga500 wrote:

-------------------------------------

A viable solution is more likely to take the form of a pumpable "liquid" - i.e. composed of nanoscale batteries. Similar buckeyball approaches have been proposed for storing H2 before and haven't hit prime time yet.

This approach would of course means existing philosophies are largely unchanged, pumpable "fuel" into a "wet" wing which is then transported via internal fuel systems to the engines for use. Dunno what a lightening strike would do for the overall system, but one step at a time.

You dismiss the other scenarios but this one is fine, where I work we call this "ugly baby syndrome".

Amiga500 wrote:

Of course, either approach will still require airports to have access to Gigawatts of power to recharge said nanoscale batteries (or conventional scale batteries).

Well they currently have Gigawatts of power in the form of chemical energy, we are just talking about having this available through electrical supply, this is done in many parts of the world particularly in large industrial chemical complexes.

Fred

This plane looks less crazy than a B2 and the latter has flown before there was WWW or GSM.

I expect Boeings NSA to be hybrid electric.

If this design had conventional winglets and a normal tail it would be quite realistic.

Big electric motors in the wings. 1 hour or 400nm range of battery capacity. A single gas turbine generator in the tail can act as a range extender.

The range extender does not need to be sized to provide all of the electricity for takeoff as the battery can help in the climb. The generator only has to be big enough provide enough electricity at cruise. This design will allow a smaller gas turbine and the batteries capacity will only need to be a fraction of the size of a non hybrid electric design.

As battery technology improves the electric only range of the design increases.

phlsfo wrote:

DarthLobster wrote:

So, this is Airbus equivalent of the Sonic Cruiser, a radical placeholder to make them look innovative until airlines are willing to plunk down money on the next generation of aircraft, all of which will look nothing like this.

Kahless would find such tactics dishonorable.

This is what drives innovation. They even say that this is basically a study as to what they can learn about flight from nature. It is not intended to be a production product. To say this is dishonorable is missing the point entirely. Do you really thing the A350, A380, and any other aircraft that Airbus made didn't have any elements that were pulled from "crazy" concepts? That is how the design process works.

I wish they would spend the time on hypersonic transport instead of this crap.

flash330 wrote:

PW100 wrote:

I'd choose the modern, clean, efficient petrol car (euro 6d) vs any electrical-coal powered car.

Stand behind a petrol car while someone revving the engine, see how clean it is

After you, when you have removed your head from the coal plant chimney . . .