Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Airplane Parachutes : Lesson from Malaysian MH 370

Someday, the black box will be recovered and they mystery of the flight landing in middle of nowhere resolved. Having taken more then a 1000 flights in my life, I have never felt very safe in a plane and always took the emergency seat or the seat next to the front door. There are many a flights, where I felt, I had to kiss good bye to everyone and luckily nothing happened. But in flying, as soon as the plane rocks, the first feeling is that of the last stage, as the chance of survival is minimal.

Here as a Textile Expert, I cannot stop myself designing a solution for falling planes.

All, it takes a a parachute of the size of Boeing/ Airbus or whichever plane, embedded on the top of the body of the plane, which can either be manually opened or programmed to automatically open against certain set of failures.

Which means, there will be two very large parachutes, one on the wings and another one on the top body running parallel to it and secured in place with hooks. The two parachutes , like a plus sign, will keep the plane in balance while floating down.

Though, planes are already designed to glide for around 30 to 40 mins, in case of an engine failure, yet the mechanism of its safe landing during accident is altogether missing. For air force jets, parachutes are fitted behind for fast braking, the same principles applies for slow landing of a failed plane in mid air.

The parachutes can be made out of simple carbon fabric to keep the weightlessness. Same for its ropes. The whole parachute will not be more then 50 kgs, but a very key part of safety in aviation. The cost of this will not be more then a few thousand dollars per plane.

The plane of course, if it lands on sea, should have the equipment to move as sea planes. And if it lands on ground, then to have cushion padding on the bottom part of the body. This can be a simple non woven material as that of polyurethane. Infact, the padding itself will allow the plane to float on sea, then to sink, so it acts as a double purpose.

Another issue is about the plane rocking in turbulence. Actually, if you see outside the window, there is no turbulence around. But the plane still rocks. The reason is the density of the air changes suddenly and the plane struggles to move in the changed density. Same as you were to drive a car on sandy road. However, if there were equipment's, which could monitor the density of air for the next 50 miles or whatever miles required for the plane to maneuver itself. The plane can accordingly steer itself above or below that air pocket. This simply need a electromagnetic wave to pass through air as in case of a radar and capture the distortion.

The big challenge is still to make it land at a slow speed. The current speeds of landing have been a cause of many an accidents ,as more accidents have been seen on ground then in air.
The landing speeds simply cannot be more then 50 to 60 miles per hour. While for a take off, it is understandable, that it needs high speeds to get the winds to follow Bernoulli`s equation. But for landing, the plane has to get into the gliding mode in its last phase of landing.

On the fire on the planes, it should be mandatory to have all the inner-walls and upholstery made out of Flame Retardant Fabrics. The fuel tank should be detachable. 

Rest, I hope, soon there will be a textile band, which will be fitted on the head of the pilot and will monitor his mind in real time, lest he takes it for a joy ride into middle of sea. Any deviation from the normal route should automatically alert the ATC .

At the end, what  is a plane, simple two engines on a wing. Rest is all like a bus. Canadian University has now designed a plane, which you can pedal and fly it up in air. No engines.

Hope, we see the changes coming soon.




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