you’re able to say bye to the quadcopter . That much is obvious . But what about plane ? Passengers on commercial airlines actually have niggling to worry about , asIEEE Spectrumexplains today .
IEEE Spectrumput the dawdler - airliner crash interrogation to George Morse , founder ofFailure Analysis Service Technology , a company that specialise in analyse foreign - object damage to airplanes . Morse has n’t trade with any drone collisions , but he has investigated a lot of birdstrikes — a lot because it ’s an fantastically common job .
The biggest hazard is when birds , or in this case drones , are sucked whole into an engine . Here ’s what Morse has tosay to IEEE Spectrum :
The drone will murder the leading edge of the fan blade and would believably break up into small pieces . The fan sword itself is not potential to break , in Morse ’s view . “ There ’s a practiced chance it ’ll take the railway locomotive out at high mogul , ” say Morse , but not necessarily . “ It ’s absolutely awesome how they will still run . ” … But what about the atomic number 3 - ion batteries that these little radio-controlled aircraft carry ? Are n’t they hard enough to make real problems for a turbojet engine locomotive engine ? “ Ice can be intemperate , too , ” allege Morse . And as for the headache about the volatile textile from a battery end up in the burning chamber : “ The engine will plausibly burn it up . ”
Even if the drone does take out an engine , the plane is not move to fall out of the sky . Modern airliner are designed to fly even with one railway locomotive down . ( They usually have two or four . ) In cases where wench have taken down planes , such as the US Airways flight thatemergency landed on the Hudson in 2009 , a whole flock of hiss took out all the engines . Quadcopters at least do n’t fly around in huge swarms — well , as least not yet .
But today ’s drone collision interrogation is a fascinating window into the world of hardcore engine testing . Birdstrikes are a serious enough job that chickens are sacrificed to the cause . Achicken gunshoots real or simulatedbirds made of gelatininto engines — often the last step in extensive engine testing process . Here ’s Mythbusters shooting some frozen and thawed chickens out of a gun :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCQ2oZtVNpg
But even if drones are improbable to take down an airplane engine , they can still make expensive scathe and delayed flight of stairs . And they pose a bigger peril to smaller carpenter’s plane with small engine that may not be able to manage several pound of charge plate or alloy . This is n’t an wild problem either . The number of drone sightings by pilotshas been creeping up , with 193 sightings in a period of less than a year . crumple up , guys . [ IEEE Spectrum ]
Top image : Photoncatcher / Shutterstock
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