Could a Jet Engine Withstand a Drone?
You can say goodbye to the quadcopter. That much is obvious. But what about airplanes? Passengers on commercial airlines actually have little to worry about, as IEEE Spectrum explains today.
IEEE Spectrum put the drone-airliner crash question to George Morse, founder of Failure Analysis Service Technology , a company that specializes in analyzing foreign-object damage to airplanes. Morse hasn't dealt with any drone collisions, but he has investigated a lot of birdstrikesa lot because it's an incredibly common problem.
The biggest hazard is when birds, or in this case drones, are sucked whole into an engine. Here's what Morse has to say to IEEE Spectrum :
The drone will hit the leading edge of the fan blades and would probably break up into small pieces. The fan blade itself is not likely to break, in Morse's view. "There's a good chance it'll take the engine out at high power," says Morse, but not necessarily. "It's absolutely amazing how they will still run."...But what about the lithium-ion batteries that these little drones carry? Aren't they hard enough to create real problems for a turbofan engine? "Ice can be hard, too," says Morse. And as for the worry about the volatile material from a battery ending up in the combustion chamber: "The engine will probably burn it up."
Even if the drone does take out an engine, the plane is not going to fall out of the sky. Modern airliners are designed to fly even with one engine down. (They usually have two or four.) In cases where birds have taken down places, such as the US Airways flight that emergency landed on the Hudson in 2009 , a whole flock of birds took out all the engines. Quadcopters at least don't fly around in huge swarmswell, as least not yet.
But today's drone collision question is a fascinating window into the world of hardcore engine testing. Birdstrikes are a serious enough problem that chickens are sacrificed to the cause. A chicken gun shoots real or simulated birds made of gelatin into enginesoften the last step in extensive engine testing process. Here's Mythbusters shooting some frozen and thawed chickens out of a gun:
But even if drones are unlikely to take down an airplane engine, they can still cause expensive damage and delayed flights. And they pose a bigger hazard to smaller planes with smaller engines that may not be able to handle several pounds of plastic or metal. This isn't an idle problem either. The number of drone sightings by pilots has been creeping up , with 193 sightings in a period of less than a year. Buckle up, guys.
Could a Jet Engine Withstand a Drone? by Sarah Zhang , Gizmodo
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It would be really, really, REALLY stupid to fly a drone near an airport.
There are LOTS of really stupid people out there...
That's where the big ones take off and land.
I guess that the greatest hazard for a drone flying into a commercial aircraft engine would be during take off and landing... How high can a drone go?
Here, in Louisville, it is illegal to fly anything, except within the carefully designated airspace over a specific flying field designed for both drones and model airplanes and helicopters. Louisville's airspace is tightly controlled, both by the state and the FAA. Oh, and the Army, located at Ft. Knox.
I worked at the water company, at the edge of "town", and we often saw lots of army planes and helicopters flying around-- but rarely did we ever see anything remotely resembling a commercial flight, or even private planes. You could see private planes flying over the river, but they weren't very high up, and they were following the river to someplace else.
There is the Steve Henry Flying Field, located not far from our house, but it is watched carefully by the police. It is kind of out in the middle of nowhere and certainly isn't on any sort of flight path. It was a HUGE deal to get it designated as a model airplane, helicopter, and small drone field. In fact, it required the state government, to designate the area as a safe airspace, along with the FAA and the army, and it includes all of Tom Sawyer State Park.
While there is an idiot born every moment, I hope that the large jetliners are safe...