Are those Airplane designing engineers that stupid?
Posted by James on November 11, 2010 · 14 Comments
Question by wo: Are those Airplane designing engineers that stupid?
* Events of Airplane accidents involving birds are so common.
* I believe the designing Engineers are so stupid not to realize that suitable grills/metal nets are so important to be provided to the engine’s front, so to prevent various type of birds from filtering through causing plane damages or crashes.
* This solution is the simplest thing comes on any sound minded person.
*** If grill fitting is not the solution (which I don’t believe! ) then please explain why?
Best answer:
Answer by ski_pil0t
Before you start calling Engineers ‘so stupid’, maybe you should do a search for how many times this question has been posed in the last 72 hours and think about how this reflects on your own perspicacity.
Give your answer to this question below!
When a bird strikes a metal grill or screen at several hundred miles per hour will the grill stop it, or slice it into slightly smaller chunks that go through the engine along with pieces of the grill?
Weight is a prime concern in aircraft design, a screen or grill strong enough to be effective would be quite heavy. All to prevent a hazard that is fairly low risk.
the nets/grills lower the engines air intake and make the engine less efficient, substitute power for safety?
I wish people would search for these answers Engineeers ar not stupid maybe you should read up on the Coand? effect and phase change before you make stupid comments.
I feel bad for the birds . 🙁
Poor birdys .
Sir, every problem has an easy to understand wrong solution.
Engineers are not blinded by the wrong solution and that’s the difference.
You wanted to know why, since many have already explained the performance degradation factor I’d just say about something a bit different. Jets operate at altitudes where icing is a common phenomenon. Now if I put a grill as you want and at 30,000 feet, ice blocks the intake. Does that sound good? Fearing a hazard that happens once in maybe 10,000 flights, we put our aircraft in harm’s way every single time. We are not *that* stupid.
Does the sound minded person have a solution for this?
‘Stupid’ would be an engineer who doesnt even ‘Google it’ or search Yahoo Answers before jumping to the ubiquitous ‘bird mesh’ solution!
Enough birds mashed against the grill would block the needed airflow and snuff the engine.
I am really fed up of the Hudson river crash questions.
Every question has been asked about 4 times so just look over the last 2 or 3 pages to find the answer.
Its getting a little bit annoying.
The engineers are not stupid. You appear to be though, for commenting about something that has been hashed over repeatedly since the incident took place. Get a clue and then come back.
if aircraft engineers were stupid, then every time an airplane had a bird strike it would be falling out of the sky. if aircraft engineers were stupid, then flying would be the most dangerous form of travel there is, rather than the safest.
engineers in general are some of the most intelligent people around. they have high levels of education, and much of it is hands on education not just lectures like many other subjects. i suggest that before you spout off at how stupid engineers are, you first pull your head out, and get an education yourself.
some solutions may seem simple at first, but the reality is that many simple solutions cause other more serious problems.
a 12lb geese at 200mph, has roughly the energy as a 1000 car at 24mph . No screen /mesh will stop it.
I drove a Hudson once that had a big ol’ grill in front. It looked meaner than a constipated alligator.
That’s the only practical way of putting the words, “Hudson” and “grill” together sensibly.
It simply won’t work with airplanes. Sorry, you’ll just have to accept a little bit of risk in your life.
For someone who is not in the airplane business or knows little about flight, it is NOT a stupid question. Since you ask in the aircraft section, where lots of experts are, I can see why you’re getting flack… but its really not appropriate and I feel ashamed by most of the posters.
Firstly, you are right, bird strikes are very common. I have actually had a birdstrike myself, having only 300 hours to my name, and of course there are countless more.
There are several problems putting a grill in front of the engines. I will list some of the biggest issues for you.
1. As people have already pointed out, travelling as fast as airplanes do when birdstrikes occur, the grill would more likely chop up the bird, rather than stop it. Or, in a worse case scenario, the grill might actually break. Then you’ll have chunks of bird, AND chunks of grill going into the engine. That would certainly cause havoc. This brings me to my next point.
2. To make the grill strong enough, it would have to be rather heavy. Weight is a problem face by all airplanes. It is such a problem, that in some airplanes you actually can not fill it with passengers, cargo, and fuel because the maximum weight of the aircraft will be exceeded, and will not fly sufficiently well to meet government standards. So for an airplane to spend weight on grills, means that the company will be missing out a couple thousand dollars worth every single time the plane flies. Over the course of its lifetime, that translates to millions of dollars.
3. The likelihood of birds taking out both engines is incredibly unlikely. Its like being struck by lightning twice at the same time. It has happened to people in the world! Just like birds taking out both engines in this case has apparently happened, but it’s so rare, that it has become statistically negligible. There are far scarier things out there that engineers do because they think nothing bad will happen…
4. A grill will create problems with airflow. An engine is very carefully designed, and requires very precise measurements and designs. Did you know that the engines are actually pointed towards the centre of the aircraft by about 1-2 degrees? Slight design characteristics like these make the engine more efficient, and a more efficient airplane will save gas, lower costs, and ultimately lower the ticket price to make the airline more competitive. If you stick your hand out the window down the highway, there is significant amount of air hitting your hand. Now imagine that force, times 8. That’s how fast an airplane is travelling at cruise. Can you imagine how much wind resistance that grill would make? Granted, the grill would have narrow bars and be streamlined, but even then how can you make something both tiny, and strong? Can we make it like a wing?
5. Well, the engines are cleverly designed to take in so much air. Have you ever wondered why a deskfan collects dust? Its because of something called the boundary layer. There is actually a thin layer of air, immediately above a surface, that remains fixed to the object.
So even tho the fan blade is spinning, that thin layer of air on the blade, does not move, and the dust is trapped within that layer, so it ‘sticks’ to the fan blade. Now, look at an airplane. The boundary layer is still present along the surface of an airplane, and gets thicker the further back one goes. So at the very front of the airplane, the boundary layer may be only a millimeter thick. But at the very back of the plane, the boundary layer, rather that layer of non-moving air, may be as thick as a few centimeters. It’s hard to picture that an airplane travelling over 800km/h can have air stuck to it that is not moving, but this is the boundary layer phenomena. The grill, if it is long and streamlined, will have a boundary layer. When the air moves around the boundary layer, it will become turbulent, like wake turbulence behind an airplane. The turbulence generated behind an aircraft is sufficient to flip a smaller airplane over. The turbulence that would be generated from a grill, granted will be less, but the engine is more sensitive to these changes. A few bumps here, few bumps there, no biggie. But to persistently send turbulent air into the engine will cause significant efficiency decrease, unnecessary wear on the engine, and increase the likelihood of weird engine phenomena like a compressor stall (which has been known to occur on the ground when airflow around the engine is strong and erratic).
Ack! The rest of of my answer is getting cut off… Oh well. There’s a few reasons anyway.
Engineers must be stupid. They obviously put the engines on backwards. If the engines blew towards the front of the plane, they would blow the geese and other fowl out of the way and the engines would always get bird-free air from the back end. So simple. So effective. Cheaper than grills/filters.
You sir, should go to school and learn to be an engineer! And you are a hero for having the nerve to ask this question. Bravo.