Acentiss Electric Dual-Rotor Aviation Motor

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Acentiss is a German engineering and consulting firm specializing in medicine, aerodynamics, and recently, the creation of two small electric motors for light aircraft.  Located almost symbolically between Robert Koch Strasse (Nobel Prize in Medicine) Max Plank Strasse (Nobel in Physics), and EinsteinStrasse (Nobel in Physics) in Ottobrunn, the company not only provides design services for wind turbines and their components, assistance with process flows for the manufacture of medical equipment and devices, and consultancy services for the automotive and aeronautical industries, but has created components for use on light aircraft and unpiloted aerial systems. Their motors, developed with assistance from Geiger Engineering, look a great deal like the HP-25D from that company, often seen flying on PC-Aero aircraft.  The two motors, both 218 millimeter (8.6 inches) in diameter, produce a maximum of 32 kilowatts (42.8 horsepower) or 40 kW (53.6 hp).  The smaller motor can produce 25 kW (33.5 hp.) continuously at a leisurely 1,950 rpm, and the larger …

EAS VIII: Making Small Airplanes Ride Smoothly

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Dr. C. P. (Case) van Dam of the University of California at Davis provided some counter-intuitive pointers on making small airplanes ride more smoothly to participants at the eighth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium in late April.  His solutions for ride quality enhancement in small airplanes are an essential ingredient in making electric Sky Taxis a plausible reality.  Because at least initially many electric aircraft are constrained to long wing spans and light wing loadings, they are subject to “perturbations of significant magnitude to be unacceptable.”  These disruptions of the intended altitude and direction of the aircraft can be more upsetting to passengers than to the aircraft itself, but van Dam had several suggestions to alleviate the vertical and lateral accelerations that passengers perceive as bumpy air. He had explained the possible need for a gust alleviation system in his 2008 Electric Aircraft Symposium talk, something he felt even then would be necessary, “In order for these vehicles to achieve acceptable …

Are Wind Turbines Bad for Aviation?

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

It would be a supreme irony if a part of environmentally-positive power production halted the possibility of “green” aviation by making it unsafe to be in the skies.  Luckily, this might not be the major problem some perceive, and solutions are in place or being developed.   For a brief time last April the United States Air Force held up construction of an eastern Oregon wind farm that will be the largest in America.  Concerned with the possible interference that 300 new giant wind turbines might cause for radar station transmissions in an otherwise remote part of the state, the Air Force stepped in.  That was a short-lived interruption, with Oregon’s Senators countering with concerns about the 706 jobs, $130 million in taxes to local counties over two decades and $2.7 million in royalty payments to farmers and ranchers that would be lost by shutting down the project, even though the Federal Aviation Administration issued a “notice of presumed hazard” that halted construction of towers …