Experts reconstructed the take-off scheme of the Tu-154 based on the readings of the flight recorder, the Kommersant newspaper reports. The obtained result seemed unusual to the experts - it turned out that when the navigator warned the pilots about the fall, they did not react to it in any way. The airliner's sensors did not detect the "toward" movement of the steering wheel, which was logical in the current situation.

ON THIS TOPIC

Moreover, a source close to the investigation said that “until the collision with water, they responded to the control actions of the crew in a timely and regular manner.” The pilot's emotional statement about the flaps may indicate a non-critical delay in the order to remove them, but not a technical malfunction.

Aviation experts suggested that the pilots' behavior was greatly affected by the fact that the flight took place at night. “A few seconds after leaving a well-lit and marked lane, you cross an also illuminated coastline and you immediately find yourself in a black hole,” said one of the experts. In such a situation, the pilot must trust solely the readings of the sensors, and not his own vestibular apparatus.

However, the Tu-154 onboard systems recorded that the commander manually adjusted the flight path for a long time. This indicates his loss of orientation. Many experts criticize the inaction of the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky, but his behavior is explained by the fear of taking the helm from the senior Major Volkov.

However, a number of experts deny the “illusory” version of the Tu-154 crash. They explain the resulting diagram of the tragedy by a malfunction of the parameter recording system.

Let us add that the behavior of a pilot’s body has long been studied by such a science as aviation psychology. However, experts have still not been able to determine why an aircraft captain instinctively breaks the flight path. Experts say that fatigue, stress and malaise can contribute to loss of orientation. According to statistics, every tenth plane crash in the world occurs due to illusions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines stopped. We're doing everything damned possible to get them up and running again. I’m sure you’re not completely in dire straits.”

There are a lot of real dangers to flying airplanes. All of them are quite well studied. Dozens of cases a year of airplane collisions with birds, as a rule, do not lead to disasters or accidents at all, and even more so do not serve as a reason for bans to limit flights to countries where there are birds. Cumulonimbus clouds pose a deadly hazard to aircraft, yet hundreds of aircraft daily simply avoid them at a safe distance (about 50 kilometers midway between the clouds, or 15 kilometers away from a single cloud). Enumerating such phenomena is not the topic of the material; believe me, their presence in nature does not reduce overall flight safety.

To clarify the issue in detail, I talked by phone with Valery Georgievich Shelkovnikov, board member of the World Flight Safety Foundation, and President of the Flight Safety Advisory and Analytical Agency. I present the results of our private conversation below in my own words and on my own behalf, because there is no way to separate the words of an expert from the words of a journalist:

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and subsequent events associated with the cancellation of flights in Europe amused me a lot. I'm not at all against aviation security. Moreover, if a person can even joke about this topic, then he still does not know what a plane crash is. Nevertheless, I will continue the topic. The mythologization of volcanic eruptions and press hysteria forced airlines to stop or postpone flights in those government territories where “clouds” of volcanic ash fell.

So was there a real danger to flights, or was there collective aviation hysteria, which was started by journalists, and then a domino effect took place? Let's try to figure it out.

Indeed, hitting aircraft engines large quantity abrasive dust (and absolutely no matter what its origin) can cause an engine fire due to instant overheating and subsequent destruction of the turbine bearings. At a rotation speed of several thousand revolutions per minute, they will simply melt from friction. Therefore, if an aircraft hits a column of volcanic dust, such a situation is quite possible.

Another thing is the special structure of volcanic dust. In addition to rock particles ejected by the explosion, it also consists of amorphous particles (by the way, glass is also amorphous) of extremely irregular shape. If you look at volcanic dust under a microscope, you can clearly see that it consists of “ribbons”, “stars” and other particles that have a very large surface area despite their low weight. Those. Thanks to this feature, it can remain in the air many times longer without dissipating. Because due to electrification and other interactions of ash particles, such clouds dissipate extremely reluctantly.

Also its peculiarity is its “stickiness”, i.e. the ability to stick to various objects or clog various holes. Moreover, the particles, being excellent condensation nuclei, after some time become absolutely outwardly indistinguishable from an ordinary cloud.

Another thing is that even at a distance of “hundreds” of kilometers from the volcano, the dust becomes so rare and finely dispersed that the likelihood of aircraft failure for this reason becomes only “theoretically” possible. And at a distance of a thousand kilometers or more, volcanic dust can only slightly cloud the air, which is nevertheless clearly visible to the naked eye, because sunrises and sunsets become most beautiful due to the special refraction of the sun's rays in the dusty air.

Those who have been to Egypt are well aware of the sandstorms over Hurghada airport. The suspension of sand in the air, and especially the concentration and size of particles in the air, is several orders of magnitude higher than the concentration of dust over Europe. And in Australia, flights in conditions of global dust storms are stopped only in cases of extreme deterioration in visibility. These examples can be continued endlessly. And now, attention!!! The only difference is that, unlike volcanic dust, other dangerous phenomena have been well studied, and there are clear recommendations for avoiding them, as well as clear regulations on prohibitions and permits “depending on.”

Let me now present my consistent version of what happened.

The influence of volcanic ash on the flight of aircraft has always been an insufficiently studied thing. Of course, scientific volcanologists persistently studied each eruption, and meteorologists had a fairly clear idea of ​​the direction and speed of the spread of ash, but no one gave the slightest importance to the further fate of these particles, because already several hundred kilometers from the volcano in the direction of the wind, the ash was already is nothing more than an interesting optical illusion. Yes, and civil aviation had only known a couple of cases before when planes actually fell into very dense clouds of ash, and because of this, engines stopped and other unpleasant things happened. Of course, volcanic ash as a dangerous phenomenon is included in all textbooks and instructions.

In practice, both pilots and air traffic controllers treated these points of instruction rather mockingly and did not study them well enough. Due to its rarity and exoticism. And it is precisely these same aviation officials who grew up from former pilots and air traffic controllers, allocated practically no money for research into these phenomena in the interests of civil aviation, which, instead of “accurate” knowledge, immediately became overgrown with myths and legends. In general, some outright nonsense has happened in meteorology. Thanks to blind faith in “computers” and “satellites” around the world, the number of weather stations with “live” people has decreased by about 60%-70%. And the existing " automated systems“can only build hypothetical mathematical models that have nothing to do with the real state of affairs.

So, journalists blew up the topic, and international aviation authorities, in particular Eurocontrol, immediately fell for it. Not only that, when aviation officials began to turn to numerous experts in this field, they (the experts) rather vindictively reported something like the following: “This phenomenon is certainly dangerous, but has not been sufficiently studied. Our equipment practically does not allow us to distinguish clouds of dangerous concentrations of volcanic dust from ordinary ones. So we don’t know where these clouds are and whether they actually exist.”

And then it got even funnier. The danger zone was actually quite local (several hundred kilometers in diameter and duration), but in reality hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of earth and water surface fell into the “closure” zone. At the same time, all levels from “0” to 35,000 feet (approximately 12 km) were also completely closed at altitudes, although even the most reinsurers predicted a dangerous closure of altitudes only from altitudes of 22,000 feet. In short, the flight ban became absolute, because even its initiators could no longer do anything. There was a domino effect.

Additionally, an absolutely unexpected thing was revealed. It was possible to fly in ash-free zones, and in some cases, deviations from the route or increasing its duration by several hundred kilometers did not play any role, but modern automated systems were simply not able to rearrange schedules en masse. And it has become impossible to do this on an individual basis. Automation, automation, and more automation. Specialists in “manual” scheduling simply died out like dinosaurs, and modern airlines simply do not have such specialists. Those who are in the know should imagine that drawing up even a regular class schedule at a university is already an action between science, art and mysticism. There was no talk of rearranging the schedule for Europe. There was a mess. I absolutely do not condemn any measures related to flight safety, but admit that in the 21st century it is quite funny to close half a continent for the sake of one mountain with smoke. Let them be strong.

“American” help only brought additional horror to Europe, and finally deprived European aviation officials of the remnants of their will.

As for Russia as a part of Europe, there was no panic at all. The fact is that many years of studying the Kuril Islands (as a zone of constant eruptions) brought a sufficient amount of knowledge and skills in identifying flight hazards. Therefore, Russia flew on its territory without problems.

Although in Russia the so-called “Storm Alert Ring” was previously destroyed, i.e. Hundreds and hundreds of weather stations were closed, where low-paid girl weather forecasters sat, and the accuracy of predictions and warnings about dangerous phenomena was unprecedentedly high.

As for the “underfunded” scientists, we can immediately confidently say that they will be allocated a lot of money for research, as compensation for past suffering. But the fact that this will disrupt world harmony, because this money will be taken away from other areas, is really bad. Business and charity are not very compatible, are they?

Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the leading scientists immediately contacted each other and called each other and developed a common position. Internet, mobile connection and email in terms of communications - work real miracles. Moreover, I also have such information. It’s not for nothing that I, at least for a short time, spent time as a geologist-geophysicist. So business will receive price lists from science in full.

And as an epilogue for those who took my words like “funny” and “ridiculous” literally, I present a short excerpt from Sergei Melnichenko’s article “The History of British Airways Flight 9.”

They could see the runway lights through a small scratch on the windshield, but the plane's landing lights were not illuminated. After landing, they were unable to taxi because the apron lights caused their windshields to become frosted. The city of Edinburgh was waiting for the tug to pull it off the runway...

It was subsequently determined that the plane entered an ash cloud. Because the ash cloud was dry, it did not show up on weather radar, which can only reflect moisture in clouds. The cloud acted as a sandblasting machine and made the surface of the windshields matte. Once in the engines, the ash melted in the combustion chambers and settled on the inside of the power plant.

Since the engines began to cool down due to their shutdown, after the aircraft exited the ash cloud, the molten ash began to solidify and began to fly out of the engines under air pressure, which allowed them to start again. The restart was made possible because one of the on-board batteries remained operational.

All 263 people on board survived.

Take care of yourself. Victor Galenko, air traffic controller, navigator, geologist-geophysicist

According to Eurocontrol, approximately 5,000 flights were recorded operating in European airspace on April 18, 2010. For comparison, before the volcanic eruption in Iceland on Sunday, there were approximately 24,000 flights. Thus, air traffic fell by about 6 times. About 63,000 flights have been canceled since April 15. Below is a table showing the decrease in the number of flights in European airspace:

Air traffic services are currently not available for general aviation aircraft in most countries in Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, almost all of France and Germany, as well as Hungary, Ireland, northern Italy, the Netherlands , Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, northern Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

In some countries on this list the top air space open, taking into account the spread of the ash cloud, however, given the complete closure of airspace over the territory of other countries, it is not possible to use the permitted sections of upper airspace.

The airspace of areas and countries such as southern Europe, including parts of Spain, Portugal, the southern Balkans, southern Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey remain open with normal air traffic.

Approximately 30% of the total number of planned flights will operate today over 50% of the total European territory.

As of the morning of April 19, all air zones of Ukraine are open. Airports of Ukraine for departure and arrival aircraft are operating normally, but a number of European airports remain closed. Flights are permitted under visual flight rules before nightfall. You will be informed about further possible changes in the airspace of Ukraine due to the movement of a cloud of volcanic ash (volcanic eruption in Iceland). Ukrainian airlines report that flights are not carried out only to closed airports in Europe, to all open airports worldwide air traffic has been resumed.

An amazing sight is a cone of steam appearing around an airplane flying at transonic speed. This amazing effect, known as the Prandtl-Gloert effect, causes the eyes to open wide and the jaw to drop. But what is its essence?

(Total 12 photos)

1. Contrary to popular belief, this effect does not appear when the plane breaks the sound barrier. The Prandtl-Gloert effect is also often associated with supersonic bang, which is also not true. Ultra-high bypass aircraft engines can create this effect at takeoff speed because the engine inlet is low pressure and the fan blades themselves operate at transonic speed.

2. The reason for its occurrence is that an airplane flying at high speed creates an area of ​​​​high air pressure in front of it and an area of ​​low pressure behind it. After the plane passes, the area of ​​low pressure begins to fill with ambient air. In this case, due to the sufficiently high inertia of air masses, first the entire low pressure area is filled with air from nearby areas adjacent to the low pressure area.

3. Imagine an object moving at transonic speed. Transonic speed is different from the speed of sound. The sound barrier is broken at a speed of 1235 km/h. Transonic speed is below, above or near the speed of sound and can vary from 965 to 1448 km/h. Therefore, this effect can occur when the aircraft is moving at a speed less than or equal to the speed of sound.

4. And yet it’s all about the sound - the “visibility” of this steam cone behind the plane depends on it. The cone shape is created by the force of sound (in the case of airplanes) moving faster than the sound waves it produces. The Prandtl-Gloert effect arises as a result of the wave nature of sounds.

5. Again, think of the plane as the source and the sound as the crest of the wave. These sound wave crests are a series or shell of overlapping circles. When the waves overlap each other, a cone shape is created, and the tip is the source of the sound. So far invisible.

6. For the effect to become visible to the human eye, one more thing is needed - humidity. When the humidity is high enough, the air around the cone condenses and forms the cloud we see. As soon as the air pressure returns to normal, the cloud disappears. The effect almost always occurs on planes flying over the ocean in the summer - the combination of water and heat gives the desired level of humidity.

7. Here you can destroy another one. Some believe that the Prandtl-Gloert effect occurs as a result of fuel combustion.

8. You can probably understand if you think that this effect is a contrail, that is, an unnatural cloud appearing from condensed water vapor produced by engine exhaust. However, this is not the same thing. The water vapor is already there - it's already in the air before the plane even passes through it.

9. Air pressure is also worth mentioning. When an airplane is moving at transonic speed, the air pressure around it is called an N-wave because when pressure varies with time, the result is similar to the letter N.

10. If we could slow down the blast wave passing through us, we would see the leading compression component. This is the beginning of the N. The horizontal stick occurs when the pressure drops, and when the normal atmospheric pressure returns to the final point, the letter N is created.

11. The effect is named after two outstanding scientists who discovered this phenomenon. Ludwig Prandtl (1875 – 1953) was a German scientist who studied the development of systematic mathematical analysis in aerodynamics. Hermann Glauert (1892 – 1934) was a British aerodynamicist.

12. Believe it or not, you can create this effect yourself. You only need two things: a whip and a day with high humidity. If you can whip a whip like Indiana Jones, you'll see a similar effect. Although, you shouldn't try this at home.

Small unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming more widespread every year - they are used in the filming of television shows and music videos, for patrolling territories, or just for fun. Flying drones does not require special permission, and their cost is constantly decreasing. As a result, aviation authorities in some countries decided to study whether these devices pose a danger to passenger aircraft. The results of the first studies were contradictory, but in general regulators came to the conclusion that the flights of private drones should be brought under control.

In July 2015, a Lufthansa plane landing at Warsaw Airport nearly collided with a multicopter, flying less than a hundred meters away. In April 2016, pilots passenger plane British Airways, which landed at London Airport, reported to air traffic controllers that it had collided with a drone during landing. Later, however, the investigation came to the conclusion that there was no drone, and what the pilots took for it was most likely an ordinary package lifted by the wind from the ground. However, already in July 2017, at the British Gatwick airport, a plane almost collided with a drone, after which air traffic controllers were forced to close one runway for landing and redirect five flights to reserve strips.

According to the British research organization UK Airprox Board, in 2016 in the UK there were 71 cases of dangerous encounters between passenger aircraft and drones. A dangerous proximity in aviation is considered to be the approach of an aircraft with another aircraft at a distance of less than 150 meters. Since the beginning of this year, 64 cases of drones approaching aircraft in the UK have already been recorded. In the US, last year aviation authorities recorded just under 200 cases of dangerous proximity. At the same time, aviation authorities still have a poor idea of ​​exactly how dangerous small drones can be for passenger aircraft. Some experts previously assumed that a collision with a drone for a passenger airliner would be no more dangerous than a regular bird strike.

According to the specialized publication Aviation Week & Space Technology, since 1998, 219 people have died worldwide due to mid-air collisions between passenger flights and birds, with a significant proportion of them flying in small private aircraft. However, every year airlines around the world spend a total of $625–650 million to repair damage to passenger aircraft due to bird strikes. By the way, in general passenger liners are considered resistant to direct hits from birds. When developing and testing new aircraft, special checks are even carried out - the aircraft is fired at with the carcasses of various birds (ducks, geese, chickens) to determine its resistance to such damage. Checking engines for birds being thrown into them is generally mandatory.

In mid-March last year, researchers from the American George Mason University announced that the threat of drones to aviation has been greatly exaggerated. They studied bird strike statistics from 1990 to 2014, including episodes ending human casualties. As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that the real probability of a dangerous collision between a drone and an airplane is not so high: just one case in 187 million years should end in a large-scale disaster.

To try to determine whether drones actually pose a threat to passenger aircraft, aviation authorities in the European Union and the United Kingdom commissioned two independent studies in 2016. The engineers who conduct these studies shoot various drone designs or drone parts at different parts of the aircraft to produce real-life damage that passenger aircraft might suffer in a collision. In parallel, mathematical modeling of such collisions is carried out. The research is carried out in several stages, the first of which have already been completed and the results are presented to customers. It is expected that after the work is fully completed, aviation authorities will develop new rules for the registration and operation of drones by private individuals.

A drone crashes into the windshield of a passenger plane during testing in the UK.

Today at different countries There are no uniform rules for drone flights. Thus, in the UK there is no requirement to register and license drones weighing less than 20 kilograms. Moreover, these devices must fly within the operator’s line of sight. Private drones with cameras are not allowed to fly within 50 meters of people, buildings or cars. In Italy, there are practically no special rules for drones, except for one thing - drones cannot be flown around large crowds of people. And in Ireland, for example, all drones weighing more than one kilogram must be registered with the country's Civil Aviation Authority. By the way, in the European Union, Ireland is one of the ardent supporters of tightening the rules for the use of drones.

Meanwhile, while Europe plans to tighten the screws, in the United States, on the contrary, they intend to make drone flights more free. So, earlier this year, the US Federal Aviation Administration came to the conclusion that lightweight consumer quadcopters do not pose a big threat to aircraft, although their flights near airports are unacceptable. In February, American companies 3DR, Autodesk and Atkins already received permission to control drone flights at the world's busiest airport - International airport Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, which annually handles about one hundred million passengers. Here, quadcopters were used to create 3D maps of an airport in high resolution. They carried out flights in the direct line of sight of the operator and under the control of air traffic controllers.

The results of the study were first published in October last year by a working group of the European Aviation Safety Agency. These researchers concluded that amateur drones do not pose a serious threat to passenger aircraft. During their work, the working group participants focused on studying the consequences of air collisions between passenger aircraft and drones weighing up to 25 kilograms. For the study, drones were divided into four categories: large (weighing more than 3.5 kilograms), medium (up to 1.5 kilograms), small (up to 0.5 kilograms) and “harmless” (up to 250 grams). For each category, experts determined the degree of danger, which was assessed on a five-point scale: 1-2 - high, 3-5 - low. Devices that received four to five points were considered safe.

To determine the degree of danger, the researchers used data on aircraft flight altitudes by category, took into account the likelihood of their appearance in the same airspace as aircraft, as well as the results of computer and full-scale tests of collisions between drones and airliners. In addition, the individual degree of danger was assessed for each unmanned vehicle using four points: damage to the hull, threat to the lives of passengers, threat to the lives of the crew, threat of disruption to the flight schedule. To simplify the assessment, the researchers carried out calculations for aircraft flying at a speed of 340 knots (630 kilometers per hour) at an altitude of three thousand meters or more and at a speed of 250 knots at a lower altitude.

Based on the results of all the calculations, the participants of the European working group came to the conclusion that small drones at an altitude of up to three thousand meters pose virtually no threat to passenger aircraft. The fact is that such devices rise to high altitudes, where they can collide with an airplane, extremely rarely. In addition, they have very little mass. Medium drones, according to experts, do not pose a serious threat to airliners. Only if a device weighing 1.5 kilograms (most amateur drones have such a mass) collides with an aircraft at an altitude of more than three thousand meters, can it threaten flight safety. Large aircraft are recognized as dangerous for passenger aircraft at all flight altitudes.

Based on the results of full-scale tests, it turned out that in the event of a collision with drones, the windshields of airliners, nose cones, leading edges of the wing, and engines can receive the greatest damage. In general, damage from drones weighing up to 1.5 kilograms can be comparable to damage from birds, which aircraft regularly collide with in the air. Now European experts are preparing for an expanded study. This time, the damage that drones can cause to passenger aircraft engines will be studied, and the likelihood of batteries getting into technological holes will be assessed.

By the way, earlier scientists from Polytechnic University Virginia conducted computer simulations of situations in which various drones fall into a running aircraft engine. The researchers came to the conclusion that devices weighing more than 3.6 kilograms pose a serious danger to engines. Once in the engine, they will destroy the fan blades and collapse themselves. Then fragments of the fan blades and drone will fall into the external air circuit, from where they will be thrown out, as well as into the internal circuit - the compressor, combustion chamber and turbine area. The speed of debris inside the engine can reach 1,150 kilometers per hour. Thus, if a drone weighing 3.6 kilograms collides during takeoff, the engine will completely stop working in less than a second.

Meanwhile, the results of the British study were summed up in the middle of this year - in July, the company that carried out the work, QinetiQ, submitted a report to the UK National Air Traffic Control Service. The study, conducted by a British company, used a specially designed air gun that fired drones and drone parts at predetermined speeds into the fronts of decommissioned planes and helicopters. Quadcopters weighing 0.4, 1.2 and 4 kilograms, as well as aircraft-type drones weighing up to 3.5 kilograms, were used for shooting. Based on the results of the shooting, experts came to the conclusion that any drones are dangerous for light aircraft and helicopters that do not have a special certificate for protection against bird strikes.

Bird-resistant passenger aircraft can suffer serious damage from drones when flying at cruising speeds, which range from 700 to 890 kilometers per hour. The researchers considered serious damage to be the destruction of windshields in a collision with heavy parts of drones - metal parts of the body, camera and battery. These parts, breaking through the windshield, can fly into the cockpit, damage control panels and injure pilots. Devices weighing from two to four kilograms were considered dangerous for airliners. It should be noted that passenger aircraft develop cruising speed at high altitudes (usually about ten thousand meters), which amateur drones are simply unable to reach.

According to QinetiQ, drones weighing four kilograms can be dangerous for passenger aircraft at low flight speeds, such as during landing. At the same time, the severity of damage to the aircraft largely depends on the design of the drone. Thus, during tests it turned out that drones with a camera mounted on a gimbal under the body have little chance of breaking through the windshield of a passenger aircraft. The fact is that in a collision, the camera on the gimbal will hit the glass first, and then the drone body. In this case, the camera and its suspension will play the role of a kind of shock absorber, taking on part of the impact energy. British aviation authorities, who are pushing for a sharp tightening of drone flight regulations, are expected to commission additional research.

Some commercially produced drones today already have a geofencing function. This means that the device constantly updates a database of zones closed to drone flights. The drone simply will not take off in such an area. However, in addition to serial devices, there are also homemade drones that can fly into the airspace of airports. And there are quite a lot of them. In general, so far not a single case of a collision between an aircraft and a drone has been recorded, but this is just a matter of time. And even if small drones do not pose a serious threat to passenger aircraft, they can still have a negative impact on aviation, increasing the already considerable costs for companies to repair aircraft.

Vasily Sychev

Illustration copyright Airbus Image caption An example of what a strength set might look like in the future aircraft Airbus. Instead of the usual “skeleton” of frames, stringers and spars - a lightweight mesh of complex shape

Is it possible for the very concept of flight to change completely? It is possible that this will be the case in the future. Thanks to new materials and technologies, passenger drones may appear, and supersonic airliners will return to the skies. The BBC Russian service analyzed information about latest projects Airbus, Uber, Toyota and other companies to determine which direction aviation will take in the future.

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• Would you fly on an unmanned airliner?

City sky

Nowadays, a fairly large layer of the atmosphere up to a kilometer high remains relatively free over cities. This space is used by special aviation, helicopters, as well as individual private or corporate aircraft.

But in this layer a new type of air transport is already beginning to develop. It has many names - urban or personal aviation, the air transport system of the future, sky taxi, and so on. But its essence was formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by futurist artists: everyone will have the opportunity to use a small aircraft to fly short distances.

Illustration copyright Hulton Archive Image caption This is how the artist imagined the future in 1820. An individual aircraft was present in such pictures even then

• What projects are aircraft designers working on around the world?

Engineers never gave up on this dream. But until now, the lack of durable and lightweight materials and imperfect electronics, without which many small devices cannot be launched, have been hampered. With the advent of high-strength, lightweight carbon fiber and the development of portable computers, everything changed.

The current stage of creating urban airmobile transport is somewhat reminiscent of the 1910s, the very beginning of the history of aircraft construction. Then the designers did not immediately find the optimal shape of the aircraft and boldly experimented, creating bizarre designs.

Now the common task - to make an aircraft for the urban environment - also allows us to build a wide variety of devices.

The Airbus corporation, for example, is developing three large projects at once - the manned single-seat Vahana, which, according to the corporation's plans, will be able to fly next year, and by 2021 will be ready for commercial flights. Two other projects: CityAirbus, an unmanned quadcopter taxi for several people, and Pop.Up, which the corporation is developing together with Italdesign. This is a single-seat unmanned module that can be used on a wheeled chassis for trips around the city, as well as suspended from a quadcopter for flights.

Airbus Pop.Up and CityAirbus use the quadcopter principle, and Vahana is a tiltrotor (that is, a device that takes off like a helicopter, and then turns its engines and then moves like an airplane).

Quadcopter and tiltrotor designs are now the main ones for passenger drones. Quadcopters are much more stable during flight. And tiltrotors allow you to reach higher speeds. But both schemes allow you to take off and land vertically. This is a key requirement for urban aviation, since conventional aircraft require a runway. This means that the construction of additional infrastructure for the city will be required.

Other notable projects include the Volocopter from the German company eVolo, which is a multicopter with 18 propellers. This is the most successful air taxi project so far; testing has already begun in Dubai in the fall of 2017. In June, Dubai's transport management company talks about this with eVolo.

Illustration copyright Lilium Image caption Lilium is propelled by 36 electric turbines installed in a row on planes and in two blocks at the front of the device

Another project from Germany - Lilium - is interesting due to its unusual layout. This is an electric tiltrotor with 36 small turbines installed in two blocks along the wing, and with two more blocks in the front of the device. The company has already begun test flights in unmanned mode.

Japanese automaker Toyota is investing in the Cartivator project.

And the online taxi service Uber is also developing its own unmanned system; in this project, it is working closely with NASA to develop technology and software for the service in cities with high population density.

Illustration copyright Ethan Miller/Getty Images Image caption The EHang 184 passenger drone, created by the Chinese company Beijing Yi-Hang Creation Science & Technology Co., Ltd. in 2016

There are many aviation experts who are supporters of unmanned urban passenger transportation, and skeptics.

Among the latter is Avia.ru editor-in-chief Roman Gusarov. The main problem, in his opinion, is the low power of electric motors and batteries. And efficient passenger drones are unlikely to appear in the foreseeable future, despite the fact that a lot of money is being invested in their development.

“The technologies are still quite crude and the systems created using them are subject to technical failures,” Denis Fedutinov, editor-in-chief of the uav.ru portal, noted in an interview with the BBC.

According to him, such projects may simply be a nice publicity stunt and an opportunity to show that the company is engaged in cutting-edge research. He also does not rule out that, against the background of enthusiastic publications in the press, many startups may arise that, having found investor money, will not be able to create a flying passenger drone.

Executive Director of Infomost Consulting (a company engaged in consulting in the field of transport) Boris Rybak believes that so far the biggest problem in this area is fear. People will be afraid to trust their lives to an aircraft without a pilot for a long time.

“When the first self-propelled gasoline carts appeared, they rode next to the horses with smoke, smoke and roar, and people ran away. But this is normal, it was scary then, and it’s scary now,” Rybak said.

Between the houseamiand birdsami

Currently, NASA and the US Federal Aviation Administration are working on the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) program. It is within the framework of this program that Uber is collaborating with NASA and the FAA.

The development of technologies in this area is far ahead of the development of rules for their regulation. The American program began to be developed in 2015, but in " road map“its development has not yet even marked the deadline for creating rules for flights in densely populated urban areas.

Illustration copyright Italdesign Image caption The Pop.Up passenger capsule can be used on a wheeled chassis or attached to a quadcopter

This refers to drone flights for mail delivery and news video recording. But the program says nothing at all about the transportation of passengers.

Judging by data from presentations studied by the BBC Russian Service, in the future, flights of passenger drones in cities will be regulated through the formation of routes in air corridors. The same principle applies in modern civil aviation. In this case, the drones will actively interact with each other and monitor the airspace around them to avoid collisions with other drones and other objects in the air (for example, birds).

However, as Boris Rybak believes, a system built on the principle of free flight, where routes would be built by computers taking into account the location of all aircraft in the air, would be much more effective.

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Will Russia remain on the sidelines?

In Russia, authorities are also trying to take cautious steps to regulate drone flights in urban environments. Thus, Rostelecom has been interested in drones for a long time. It is a contractor for the Russian Space Systems company, which in November 2015 won the Roscosmos competition for 723 million rubles ($12.3 million) to create the infrastructure of the Federal Network Operator.

Illustration copyright Tom Cooper/Getty Images Image caption Another supersonic business jet project - XB-1 from the American company Boom Technology

This infrastructure will have to provide surveillance of transport and unmanned vehicles (including aircraft), ground and water manned and unmanned transport, by rail, explained a representative of Rostelecom. The operator is creating a prototype of infrastructure that will control the movement of vehicles, primarily drones, and is ready to spend about 100 million rubles ($1.7 million) on subcontractors.

Deputy head of the Moscow Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship Andrei Tikhonov told the BBC that the Russian capital does not yet have the conditions for the appearance of passenger drones.

"Firstly, it is not fully developed normative base for unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. Secondly, the Moscow infrastructure is not yet adapted for mass transportation of goods and passengers unmanned vehicles. Thirdly, most vehicles intended for transporting people and large loads are still at the testing stage and must receive the appropriate documentation to operate in urban environments. Again, questions of compulsory passenger insurance and many others arise,” he explained.

True, according to him, these problems do not so much stop the city authorities as force them to look for ways to solve them.

Faster than sound

Another area that many aircraft manufacturing corporations are working on is supersonic passenger transportation.

This idea is not new at all. November 22 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of regular commercial flights between New York, Paris and London on Concorde aircraft. In the 1970s, the idea of ​​supersonic transportation was implemented by British Airways together with Air France, as well as Aeroflot on the Tu-144. But in practice it turned out that the technologies of that time were not suitable for civil aviation.

As a result, the Soviet project was canceled after seven months of operation, and the British-French one after 27 years.

Illustration copyright Evening Standard Image caption Concorde, like the Tu-144, was ahead of its time, but showed how difficult it is to make a supersonic passenger plane

Finance is usually cited as the main reason why the Concorde and Tu-144 projects were cancelled. These planes were expensive.

The engines of such devices consume much more fuel. For such aircraft it was necessary to create its own infrastructure. The Tu-144, for example, used its own type of aviation fuel, which was much more complex in composition; it required special maintenance, which was more thorough and expensive. For this aircraft it was even necessary to maintain separate ramps.

Another serious problem, in addition to the complexity and cost of maintenance, was noise. During the flight supersonic speed A strong air compaction occurs at all leading edges of the aircraft elements, which generates a shock wave. It reaches behind the plane in the form of a huge cone, and when it reaches the ground, the person through whom it passes hears a deafening sound, like an explosion. It is because of this that Concorde flights over US territory at supersonic speed were prohibited.

And it is noise that designers are now primarily trying to combat.

After the cessation of Concorde flights, attempts to build a new, more efficient supersonic passenger aircraft did not stop. And with the advent of new technologies in the field of materials, engine building and aerodynamics, people began to talk about them more and more often.

Several large projects in the field of supersonic civil aviation are being developed around the world. Basically, these are business jets. That is, designers initially try to target that market segment where the cost of tickets and service plays a lesser role than in route transportation.

Illustration copyright Aerion Image caption Aerion is developing the AS2 aircraft in partnership with Airbus

NASA, together with Lockheed Martin Corporation, is developing a supersonic aircraft, trying, first of all, to solve the problem of the sound barrier. QueSST technology involves searching for a special aerodynamic shape of the aircraft, which would “smear” the hard sound barrier, making it blurry and less noisy. Currently, NASA has already developed the appearance of the aircraft, and its flight tests may begin in 2021.

Another notable project is AS2, which is being developed by Aerion in partnership with Airbus.

Airbus is also working on the Concord 2.0 project. This aircraft is planned to be equipped with three types of engines - a rocket in the tail section and two conventional jet engines, with the help of which the aircraft will be able to take off almost vertically, as well as one ramjet, which will already accelerate the aircraft to a speed of Mach 4.5.

True, Airbus deals with such projects quite carefully.

“Airbus continues to research in the field of supersonic/hypersonic technologies, we are also studying the market to understand whether these types of projects will be viable and feasible,” Airbus said in an official commentary to the BBC Russian Service. “We do not see a market for such aircraft now and in the foreseeable future due to the high costs of such systems. This may change with the advent of new technologies, or with changes in the economic or social environment. In general, for now this is more of an area of ​​study, rather than a priority direction."

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Is it possible to revive Concorde?

It is really difficult to predict whether there will be a demand for such aircraft. Boris Rybak notes that information technologies have also developed in parallel with aviation, and now a businessman who needs to quickly resolve an issue on the other side of the Atlantic can often do this not in person, but via the Internet.

“It’s six hours to fly business class or a business jet from London to New York. Otherwise, technically you’ll spend four, well, three and forty. Is this [game] worth the price?” - said Rybak regarding supersonic flights.

Based on the experience of the Tu-144

However, other Russian aviation experts think differently. Supersonic aircraft will be able to take their place in the market, says the rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute, Mikhail Pogosyan, the former head of the United Aircraft Corporation.

“A supersonic aircraft makes it possible to reach a qualitatively different level; it allows you to save global time - a day. Market forecasts indicate that the introduction of this kind of technology and this kind of project will be associated with the cost of such a flight. If such a cost is acceptable and will not times different from the cost of a flight on a subsonic aircraft, then I assure you that there is a market,” he told the BBC Russian Service.

Pogosyan spoke at the Aerospace Science Week forum at the Moscow Aviation Institute, where he, in particular, spoke about the prospects for creating supersonic aircraft with the participation of Russian specialists. Russian enterprises (TsAGI, MAI, UAC) are participating in the large European research program Horizon 2020, one of the directions of which is the development of a supersonic passenger aircraft.

Poghosyan listed the main properties of such an aircraft - a low level of sonic boom (otherwise the aircraft will not be able to fly over populated areas), a variable cycle engine (it needs to work well at subsonic and supersonic speeds), new heat-resistant materials (at supersonic speeds the aircraft gets very hot), artificial intelligence, as well as the fact that such an aircraft can be controlled by one pilot.

At the same time, the rector of MAI is convinced that the supersonic aircraft project can only be created at the international level.

Illustration copyright Boris Korzin/TASS Image caption According to Sergei Chernyshev, Russia has preserved the school of creating supersonic passenger aircraft

The head of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after Professor N. E. Zhukovsky (TsAGI) Sergei Chernyshev told at the forum that Russian specialists are participating in three international projects in the field of supersonic passenger aviation- Hisac, Hexafly and Rumble. All three projects do not aim to create a final commercial product. Their main task is to investigate the properties of supersonic and hypersonic vehicle. According to him, now aircraft manufacturers are only creating the concept of such an aircraft.

In an interview with the BBC, Sergei Chernyshev said that the strength of Russian aircraft manufacturers is their experience in creating supersonic aircraft and their operation. According to him, this is a strong aerodynamic school, extensive experience in testing, including in extreme conditions. Russia also has a “traditionally strong school of materials scientists,” he added.

“My subjective forecast: on the horizon of 2030-35 a [business jet] will appear. Academician Pogosyan believes that between 2020 and 2030. He gave them ten years. This is true, but still closer to 2030,” - said Sergei Chernyshev.

"Ordinary" unusual liners

The main task of aircraft designers today is to achieve an increase in the fuel efficiency of the aircraft, while reducing harmful emissions and noise. The second task is to develop new control systems where the computer will perform more and more tasks.

Nowadays, no one will be surprised by the fly-by-wire control system of an aircraft, when signals from the control stick or steering wheel, pedals and other organs are transmitted to the rudders and other mechanization elements in the form of electrical signals. Such a system allows the on-board computer to control the pilot’s actions, making adjustments and correcting errors. However, this system is already yesterday.

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As Kirill Budaev, vice-president of the Irkut corporation for marketing and sales, told the BBC, the Russian company is working on a system where only one pilot will fly the plane, and the functions of the second during takeoff and landing will be performed by a specially trained senior flight attendant. During an airplane flight at flight level, one pilot is quite enough, Irkut believes.

According to the laws of nature

Another major innovation that has emerged in the last decade is composite materials. The development of lightweight, durable plastic can be compared to the use of aluminum in post-war aviation. This material, along with the advent of efficient turbojet engines, changed the face of aircraft. Now exactly the same revolution is happening with composites, which are gradually displacing metal from aircraft structures.

Aircraft design is increasingly using 3D printing, which allows it to create more complex shapes with high precision. And strive to reduce fuel consumption.

For example, Airbus and Boeing use the latest LEAP family engines manufactured by CFM International. The injectors in these engines are 3D printed. And this increased fuel efficiency by 15%.

In addition, the aviation industry has now begun to actively embrace bionic design.

Bionics is an applied science that studies the possibilities of practical application in various technical devices of principles and structures that appeared in nature thanks to evolution.

Illustration copyright Airbus Image caption Bracket designed using bionic technology

Here's a simple example - the picture above shows a bracket similar to the one used on an Airbus aircraft. Pay attention to its shape - usually such an element is a solid piece of triangular metal. However, by calculating on a computer the forces that would be applied to its various parts, the engineers figured out which parts could be removed and which could be modified in such a way as to not only lighten, but also strengthen such a component.

Much more complex work was carried out by a group of scientists led by Professor Niels Aage of the Technical University of Denmark. In October 2017, they published a report in the journal Nature in which they described how they calculated the force set of a Boeing 777 airliner wing on the French Curie supercomputer - a complex structure of rather thin jumpers and struts.

As a result, according to the researchers, the weight of the aircraft's two wings could be reduced by 2-5% without losing strength. Considering that both wings weigh a combined 20 tons, this would result in savings of up to 1 ton, which corresponds to an estimated reduction in fuel consumption of 40-200 tons per year. But this is already significant, isn’t it?

At the same time, bionic design in the future, as aircraft manufacturing corporations believe, will be used more and more. The plane in the first illustration to this text is just a sketch by Airbus engineers, but it already shows on what principle the powertrain of future aircraft will be created.

Electricity

The engine is the most important and most expensive part of the aircraft. And it is he who determines the configuration of any aircraft. Currently, most aircraft engines are either natural gas or internal combustion, gasoline or diesel. Only a very small part of them runs on electricity.

According to Boris Rybak, throughout the decades of the existence of jet aviation, the development of fundamentally new aircraft engines was not carried out. He sees this as a manifestation of the lobby of oil corporations. Whether this is true or not, during the entire post-war period an effective engine that did not burn hydrocarbon fuel never appeared. Although even atomic ones were tested.

The attitude towards electricity in the global aviation industry is currently changing dramatically. The concept of a “More Electric Aircraft” has emerged in global aviation. It implies greater electrification of the units and mechanisms of the device compared to modern ones.

In Russia, technology within the framework of this concept is carried out by the Technodinamika holding, part of Rostec. The company is developing electric reverse drives for the future Russian PD-14 engine, fuel system drives, and landing gear retraction and extension drives.

“In the long term, we are, of course, looking at large commercial aircraft projects. And in these large aircraft we will most likely use a hybrid propulsion system before going completely electric,” Airbus said in a commentary. “The point is that the attitude "The power-to-weight ratio of today's batteries is still very far from what we need. But we are preparing for a future where this is possible."