When it comes to airport infrastructure, the design of terminals may have changed over the years, but the long, straight runway has stayed remarkably consistent. Dutch researcher Henk Hesselink thinks it's time for a change. His radical ideas about runway design would transform the modern airport's operations, layout, and efficiency—and even its architecture.
Since 2012, Hesselink and his team at the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in the Netherlands have been working on a runway design that's circular instead of straight. Their so-called Endless Runway Project—funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program, which supported research in breakthrough technology from 2007 through 2013, and in partnership with several other European scientific agencies—proposes a circular design that would enable planes to take off in the direction most advantageous for them. Namely, the direction without any crosswinds.
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90107235/why-airport-runways-should-actually-be-circular
[Related]: giant circles from the air
Do you think such a design would work in practice?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @01:18AM (1 child)
If the bank angle of the curve of the runway happens to match the bank angle while flying in a circle, this isn't a problem. The whole design presumes that you are flying in a circle.
So, the bank angle is a function of what? (airspeed, turn rate... aircraft model?)
Assuming you land on the side with headwinds, faster wind means a shallower bank angle is needed for flight. Tolerable... but aren't we back to the same old issue of awkward landings? In this case you need to bank oddly; in the traditional cross-wind landing you need to yaw oddly. Change one and you change the other though, or at least require some funny flying.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:42PM
I'm too lazy to RTA, but I'm assuming that the runway would be somewhat bowl shaped, with steeper banking available to counteract the forces at takeoff and landing speeds, then you would steer toward the inside of the bowl for slower speeds that had less force to counteract. It would be a new piloting skill, and perhaps one best implemented by autopilots.
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