The original Ford Tri-Motor had a body by Ford and three Pratt & Whitney radial engines arrayed across its nose and wings. The Phantom Eye has a body by Boeing, and two 2.3-liter Ford engines fueled by the hydrogen the airplane carries in its bulbous fuselage. It first flew last June, but hit a snag on landing, or at least dug in and twisted a landing skid, rendering it inoperable until this year. Boeing performed software and hardware upgrades, including strengthening the landing gear. Its second flight was a big success with a successful landing – a great one even, since the airplane is reuseable. This is particularly helpful for Boeing, which funded the project out of its own pocket. The company commented on the expectations raised by the flight: “Boeing’s liquid hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye unmanned airborne system completed its second flight Feb. 25, demonstrating capabilities that will allow it to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions for up …
What Do You Have on Your DVD Burner?
Richard Kaner and Maher El-Kady have “micro-scale graphene-based supercapacitors” on their front DVD burner, showing an energetic alternative to saving all those ‘80’s rockers to disc. Dr. Kaner is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and professor of chemistry and biochemistry. He and graduate student El-Kady are using a “consumer grade” LightScribe DVD burner to make dozens of micro supercapacitors on what looks like a typical DVD. Dr. Kaner’s research lab hosts 17 undergraduate and graduate student researchers who’ve helped amass at least 390 papers in four main areas of research; conducting polymers, graphene, superhard materials and thermoelectric materials. Their recent investigation of supercapacitor fabrication seems to encompass almost all of these fields. An abstract for their recent article in Nature Communications hints at the possibilities this research may realize in the commercial world. “The rapid development of miniaturized electronic devices has increased the demand for compact on-chip energy storage. …
Solar Impulse is Here
Solarimpulse.com reports, “The Boeing 747 landed at Moffett Airfield in San Francisco at 1:13 PM (UTC-8) on Thursday 21 February. HB-SIA was immediately unloaded and, in the coming days reassembly will begin.” Almost immediately, crews will assemble and test fly the already intercontinental solar-powered aircraft in preparation for a flight from the Bay Area to the East Coast. Having conquered the gap between Europe and Africa on its trip to Rabat, Morocco and on to Quarzazate, HB-SIA braved turbulence and gusting that caused it to turn back on its initial foray into the desert. Its final arrival at a gigantic solar energy plant in Morocco’s interior was a symbol of what clean energy can accomplish and a tribute to Solar Impulse’s pilots’ skills and the team’s imaginative creation. Now, the Airbus-sized vehicle is being readied for flight testing, with possible appearances at the seventh annual Electric Aircraft Symposium and its Cross America 2013 tour. HB-SIA’s recent trip from Payerne, Switzerland …
A Fix for Dreamliner Battery Woes?
With Boeing facing financial doldrums because of its ongoing grounding and resulting slump in sales of the 787 Dreamliner, the stakes are high for the company. That makes today’s Reuters’ report that the manufacturing giant may have found a “way to fix battery problems on its grounded 787 Dreamliner jets” good news for not only Boeing, but for electric aircraft in general. Readers should read these findings with some caution, though, since another report from Japan gives a different possible cause for the problems. That said, the two reports might not be mutually exclusive. Many electric light aircraft developers use spacing between cells and some method to circulate cooling air over them. In Boeing’s two 787 lithium battery packs, eight large cells fill a fairly tight housing. Reuters quotes an anonymous source, “’The gaps between cells will be bigger. I think that’s why there was overheating,’ said the source, who declined to be identified because the plans are private. “A …
Chew on This: How a Snail Might Teach Us How to Make Better Batteries
Radula: A flexible tonguelike organ in certain mollusks, having rows of horny teeth on the surface. [Latin r dula, scraper, from r dere, to scrape] freedictionary.com The Gumboot Chiton is not pretty, and is downright ugly when turned over. The rows of molars on its underside are wonderfully suited though, to scraping algae off rocks, and the hardness of its dentures is something materials scientists study closely. The Chiton, described as a “wandering meatloaf” because of its hump of leathery brown upper skin, may not have an alluring personality, but is teeth are magnetic, leading to University of California, Riverside assistant professor David Kisailus’ attraction to them. Kisailus, specializing in chemical and environmental engineering, and his fellow researchers may have found lessons in nature, and in the mouth of this marine snail, “to create less costly and more efficient nanoscale materials to improve solar cells and lithium-ion batteries,” according to the University. Up to a foot long, “Chitons have evolved to …
Cheaper, Lighter, Stronger – But When?
We’d all love to see the battery that’s lighter, stronger, charges like a capacitor and costs next to nothing. We’d all be driving electric cars and those of us who wanted battery-powered airplanes would be designing the next new wave of flight. Usually, these things are a decade or more away, following excruciating intervals of study, commercialization and usually, much-delayed or postponed production. Dr. Chongwu Zhou, a professor at the University of Southern California’s (USC’s) Viterbi School of Engineering, claims to have such a battery under provisional patent, and potentially available commercially within “two or three years,” according to school press releases. The battery uses porous silicon nanoparticles to replace traditional graphite anodes and provide superior performance – three times as much energy as a graphite-based lithium battery and capable of being recharged within only 10 minutes. Zhou says, “It’s an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next generation lithium-ion batteries.” Zhou worked with USC graduate …
A Tea Room in the Sky
Richard Glassock is an Australian graduate student and designer working in autonomous aircraft, long-distance sailboats, and a light hybrid power system made from off-the-shelf model aircraft components. He’s even made a design study of something that would really cause a stir in the world of electric sailplanes. “I just want to send you some pictures of a concept model I’m working on. The idea is for a 6- seat sailplane, I thought about this 10 or 15 years ago when I first started getting to cloudbase in a hang glider. It is a magical world, particularly in an open air type vehicle: wouldn’t it be wonderful to share with friends. Now it seems to have turned out to be an 8-seat [sailplane with] twin electric propulsion. Somehow the canopy will stow for open top operations, while there is room for the bathroom, coffee machine, oven etc. Designed for cloudbase tea and scones [or a] gliding chess club with excellent views, …
Alchemy with Thin Film Structures
The blog has looked at several recent attempts to pull electricity from solar cells that have the ability to capture a broad range of light wavelengths. These are based on everything from layers of graphene and zinc nano-wires, to an exotic subwavelength plasmonic cavity, to straining solar cells to form wide bandgap funnels which capture light’s energy. Joining these efforts along with those of researchers in America and Germany, colleagues at the Vienna University of Technology are testing single atomic layers of oxide heterostructures, a new class of materials, to “create a new kind of extremely efficient ultra-thin solar cells.” Professor Karsten Held from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University, explains, “Single atomic layers of different oxides are stacked, creating a material with electronic properties which are vastly different from the properties the individual oxides have on their own.” Researchers used large-scale computer simulations to discover that these layered structures “hold great potential for building solar cells.” …
Taxiing, Run-ups and Braking – Then Maybe Flying
Frédéric Laude reported the near-flight condition of his team’s CC01e on Sunday, February 3 on the team’s blog. We’ve been following the progress of the airplane for several months. A very small canard, with a pilot tucked into a slim, minimal fuselage just ahead of its small Electravia motor, the plane was taken from its hangar and assembled this week despite the cold, wintry day. Frédéric reports that the team chocked the wheels and started to test motor and battery power, reaching 250 Amps and 3,500 rpm at the propeller. 200 Amps gave 3,200 rpm, and 150 Amps produced 2,900 rpm, even with cold batteries. He notes that this is all much simpler than trying to run the original not-so-quiet two-stroke engine. For the video, the motor’s top cover was left off, but will be replaced for flight testing, and a final spinner will cover the propeller hub after the first flight. Unfortunately, the video is not yet on YouTube, …
Solar Flight on a Winter Wave
Eric Raymond sent the following today. “Had a nice SUNSEEKER flight today, 3 hours, and as usual I could have stayed up into the dark, even in January! This time there was wave lift, but very weak, despite 30 knot winds at 6700 meters (21,500 feet). “In the pictures you can see the inversion clearly, and the Adriatic covered in a blanket of clouds. “My batteries are very old and cold, but I still got high enough to connect with the wave, which went on forever. “Taxing was tricky because of big lumps of snow, so I landed downwind, as the taxiway is not cleared. Both his Solar Flight website News and Blog show more, including the construction of the Sunseeker Duo, the world’s first two-seat solar-powered airplane. One blog entry in particular, shows a flight from Slovenj Gradec to Lesce Bled airport, on its way to Switzerland for an airshow. He topped Mount Triglav, the highest peak in Slovenia, and …