Lingque and other next generation Chinese Airliner
- Thread starter delft
- Start date
This is a Fantasy Ship with built in head wind. Suitable for slowly flying over a beautiful landscape except for the poor people on the upper deck who see the same sky as when they are at home sitting in their garden. Also little regard for weight.
I remember reading an article by Frank Whittle in which he said something of civilization was lost when we could sleep with our wives any more when travelling by train or aircraft. I think it was in Aeronautical Journal and trans Atlantic travel by passenger ship was then dead less than ten years. A journey across the Atlantic lasted then some six hours. One of our friend flew US to Singapore in 17 hours. That is torture
My idea of an airship is one as long as Hindenburg and with a diameter one and a half time that of Hindenburg. That gives a weight of 450 ton. Propulsion and control by co-axial propellers, the blades of which are controlled similar to the rotor blades of a helicopter. The two propellers are independently driven by electro-motors. No fins or control surfaces - no drag and weight of these. Power from gas turbines with heat exchangers similar to Type 45?
I don't know what the speed should be. The fasted Zeppelin, according to Nevil Shute, was R.100 with 100mph maximum speed. I think 200 km/h cruising speed should be reasonable but I don't think you should try that with a Zeppelin. I am thinking of a Metalclad structure, not one from aluminium sheets knitted together but from large fibre reinforced plastic panels bonded together. BTW I saw some fifty years ago a photo of a model of a proposed airship ( I don't know from where ) to be powered by a nuclear reactor at 400 km/h, I think in a Czech magazine with the name
Letectví + kosmonautika
We see people not boycotting United because it is cheaper. Time on board an airship need not be lost. You can look out at the landscape, but you can also work, much better than in a current airliner, or sleep with your wife. If you are in a hurry to contact someone on the other side of the World you wouldn't fly, not even by supersonic airliner - if you can pay for it, you would use internet. And I do believe that supersonic airliners will always be too expensive for the vast majority, even without carbon tax.
The idea of the high speed rail is that you can reach a landing place for airships where the weather is good within a reasonable time, i.e the time to a large railway station plus two hours which amounts to 600 km or so. The airship is fast enough to avoid all bad weather and will indeed profit from tail winds.
It will take so long before these airships become available that even in backward countries, as it concerns railways, like US, high speed rail will have appeared.
related, hendirk posted over on cdf
China reveals the shape of things that may come in air travel
China has flown a scale model of an airliner that exploits design elements not found in Western passenger jets
Ben Sandilands — Editor of Plane Talking
Ben Sandilands
Editor of Plane Talking
Share
COMAC’s intriguing model jet will be closely studied in Toulouse and Seattle
There were two developments in China in recent days that point to serious intentions to innovate in the design of airliners that could break the Airbus and Boeing duopoly in larger scale aviation.
And neither relate to the imminent first flight of the COMAC c919 single aisle jet, which has been doing taxying trials in Shanghai, and is imitative rather than innovative in seeking to join the huge market in such jets which is divided between the A320 and 737 families.
Development Number One is about the starting of work on a ten year Sino-Russian project to build an A330 sized twin engined wide body jet that would be able to fly non-stop between China cities and those in the US.
Or for that matter, fly the likes of Sydney or Melbourne non-stops to Los Angeles or Dubai.
There is no hint in the China Aviation Daily report about #1 having anything to do with Development Number Two which is reported in the most detail in French on the East Pendulum site, but seems to survive Google translate without any major errors.
For a teaser, you can also pick up the intriguing photos of the flight of a scaled model of future blended wing body or BWB Chinese airliner here.
If however #1 and #2 are aspects of the same wide-body 280 seat airliner ambition, there may be a lot more excitement in Airbus and Boeing than would be the case if China is sticking with the c919 strategy of producing an A320 or 737 clone (using western engines and other key components) that appears to be initially optimised for relatively short routes between PRC cities.
Look closely at the photos of the model that actually flew in the East Pendulum site and you will see that this a blended wing body or fuselage intégré en français which needn’t be any such thing, but a delta plan wing similar in construction to that seen on Concorde or its TU-144 emulator. The engines remain in a conventional under wing location, not on struts above the ovaloid wing as seen in many other BWB studies.
There is no attempt in the COMAC LingQue-B model to spill the passenger accommodation into the vastly increased wing area as often seen in western BWB design studies. Which is smart on the part of the Chinese designers, since anyone seated that far from the centreline of the cabin would experience wildly exaggerated angular momentum forces in light turbulence or slight changes in heading even while taxying on the ground.
The COMAC design is a thin wing, which doesn’t present any opportunity to build a true BWB monocoque type structure in which much of the internal loading bearing components of a conventional design are replaced by an outer structure sufficiently strong to counter the stresses of ‘ovalisation’ which occur in pressurized fuselages and would be another serious obstacle to building a full fuselage intégré airliner.
Instead the function of the delta shaped wing in this model seems to be to create space for more fuel, or perhaps, avoid the width requirements of conventional wings and thus make it easier to fit the airliner inside the gates at existing airports and be compatible with those taking nothing larger than an A321 today.
All this means that, except for one glaring anomaly, the LingQue-B design represents a serious attempt to pack more range into a future airliner while keeping it sufficiently compact not to be incompatible with many existing airport gates or taxiyways.
These are two issues that Airbus and Boeing engineers have identified in various studies dating back to the last century, yet which have not been addressed in their jets, apart from the inclusion of a folding wing tip in the design of the forthcoming Boeing 777-X family.
The anomaly in the COMAC model is the V-shaped tail. Most of the technical commentary on the LingQue-B underlines the inherent aerodynamic risks of diminished if not loss of control in a configuration like this if such an aircraft begins to yaw from side to side. If a V-tail was to be a serious part of such a design it would presumably need continuous computer driven massaging of the control surfaces of the jet to prevent such a crisis developing.
But whatever the reasons for the appearance of the model that flew in China in recent days, it signals an intention to do more than build replicas of existing western designs.
China reveals the shape of things that may come in air travel
China has flown a scale model of an airliner that exploits design elements not found in Western passenger jets
Ben Sandilands — Editor of Plane Talking
Ben Sandilands
Editor of Plane Talking
Share
COMAC’s intriguing model jet will be closely studied in Toulouse and Seattle
There were two developments in China in recent days that point to serious intentions to innovate in the design of airliners that could break the Airbus and Boeing duopoly in larger scale aviation.
And neither relate to the imminent first flight of the COMAC c919 single aisle jet, which has been doing taxying trials in Shanghai, and is imitative rather than innovative in seeking to join the huge market in such jets which is divided between the A320 and 737 families.
Development Number One is about the starting of work on a ten year Sino-Russian project to build an A330 sized twin engined wide body jet that would be able to fly non-stop between China cities and those in the US.
Or for that matter, fly the likes of Sydney or Melbourne non-stops to Los Angeles or Dubai.
There is no hint in the China Aviation Daily report about #1 having anything to do with Development Number Two which is reported in the most detail in French on the East Pendulum site, but seems to survive Google translate without any major errors.
For a teaser, you can also pick up the intriguing photos of the flight of a scaled model of future blended wing body or BWB Chinese airliner here.
If however #1 and #2 are aspects of the same wide-body 280 seat airliner ambition, there may be a lot more excitement in Airbus and Boeing than would be the case if China is sticking with the c919 strategy of producing an A320 or 737 clone (using western engines and other key components) that appears to be initially optimised for relatively short routes between PRC cities.
Look closely at the photos of the model that actually flew in the East Pendulum site and you will see that this a blended wing body or fuselage intégré en français which needn’t be any such thing, but a delta plan wing similar in construction to that seen on Concorde or its TU-144 emulator. The engines remain in a conventional under wing location, not on struts above the ovaloid wing as seen in many other BWB studies.
There is no attempt in the COMAC LingQue-B model to spill the passenger accommodation into the vastly increased wing area as often seen in western BWB design studies. Which is smart on the part of the Chinese designers, since anyone seated that far from the centreline of the cabin would experience wildly exaggerated angular momentum forces in light turbulence or slight changes in heading even while taxying on the ground.
The COMAC design is a thin wing, which doesn’t present any opportunity to build a true BWB monocoque type structure in which much of the internal loading bearing components of a conventional design are replaced by an outer structure sufficiently strong to counter the stresses of ‘ovalisation’ which occur in pressurized fuselages and would be another serious obstacle to building a full fuselage intégré airliner.
Instead the function of the delta shaped wing in this model seems to be to create space for more fuel, or perhaps, avoid the width requirements of conventional wings and thus make it easier to fit the airliner inside the gates at existing airports and be compatible with those taking nothing larger than an A321 today.
All this means that, except for one glaring anomaly, the LingQue-B design represents a serious attempt to pack more range into a future airliner while keeping it sufficiently compact not to be incompatible with many existing airport gates or taxiyways.
These are two issues that Airbus and Boeing engineers have identified in various studies dating back to the last century, yet which have not been addressed in their jets, apart from the inclusion of a folding wing tip in the design of the forthcoming Boeing 777-X family.
The anomaly in the COMAC model is the V-shaped tail. Most of the technical commentary on the LingQue-B underlines the inherent aerodynamic risks of diminished if not loss of control in a configuration like this if such an aircraft begins to yaw from side to side. If a V-tail was to be a serious part of such a design it would presumably need continuous computer driven massaging of the control surfaces of the jet to prevent such a crisis developing.
But whatever the reasons for the appearance of the model that flew in China in recent days, it signals an intention to do more than build replicas of existing western designs.
I read the comments on the Australian site and the one serious objection to the V-tail was this one:
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Most modern liners like fighters are fly by wire already so the V tail technically not an issue.
The logo well that's marketing and depends more on the angle of the stabilizers.
there is a point in pointing out the Fuselage being not a true hybrid blended wing body. and as i pointed out the wing area makes more sense for Fuel landing gear and cargo.
The logo well that's marketing and depends more on the angle of the stabilizers.
there is a point in pointing out the Fuselage being not a true hybrid blended wing body. and as i pointed out the wing area makes more sense for Fuel landing gear and cargo.
