12-15-2017, 10:07 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Auburn, Washington
Posts: 3,653
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by blackshire
In the future, electric ducted fans and the flexible composite skin "bird-like" flaps (among other full-scale new aircraft technologies that are now being tested) may enable greater diversity of configurations, perhaps including totally novel ones.
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I hope so.
Another big driver in the configuration of commercial airplanes (and which is an obstacle to flying wing/blended wing-body configurations) is the requirement to be able to get everyone out of the airplane in 90 seconds with half of the doors inoperative and with while keeping them far enough from engines that might still be operating as well as far enough from each other to fairly evenly split up the escaping traffic. That drives where the doors are and how big they are among other things. And of course those doors are openings in the pressure vessel which must not be allowed to open in flight (usually done by making them "plug" doors).
But distributed propulsion and new materials should open up the "design space" some. It will be fun to watch.
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