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from the off-we-go-into-the-wild-blue-yonder dept.
Rolls-Royce Wants to Shatter the Electric Plane Speed Record:
Rolls' electric racing plane was first announced earlier in 2019, and while on the face of things, its 500 horsepower rating and propeller-style propulsion may seem a bit old-fashioned, ACCEL as it's known is anything but. In fact, Rolls-Royce plans to use it to set a speed record.
ACCEL -- which stands for "accelerating electrification of flight" -- makes use of several unique design ideas to further its record-breaking agenda. The 750-volt battery pack being used in the racer features 6,000 individual cells that together will offer 200 miles of range. To spin its single low-speed propeller, ACCEL uses three lightweight electric motors, stacked together which deliver a combined 500 hp.
The shape of the plane is reminiscent of the racing monoplanes of the 1930s and 40s, as well as the sleek fighters employed by the Allies during World War II. This means that ACCEL features a sleek mono-wing design with a long and narrow fuselage that should allow the modestly-powered aircraft to exceed 300 miles per hour.
They hope to undertake an attempt at the current electric plane speed record — set in 2017 by Siemens at 210mph — sometime in 2020 in the UK.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 04 2019, @08:36AM (2 children)
This isn't much. They are barely trying. It really does look like a 1930s plane, except for the wingtips.
One possible upgrade would be a supersonic prop, as the XF-84H had. That one, by the way, was loud enough to cause seizures and could be heard from 25 miles away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech#Noise [wikipedia.org]
Another possible upgrade would be counter-rotating props, like the Tupolev Tu-114 and Tupolev Tu-95. This too was noisy.
Of course, those could be combined.
We might do a bit better with a design more like a typical fighter plane, spinning the engine electrically.
To really move, switch to electric arc heating. Build something like the SR-71, or even the X-43, but an electric arc in place of the burner.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Tuesday June 04 2019, @11:35AM
Counter-rotating propellers would be on separate axes, like the Wright Flyer or the P38 Lightning. You're thinking of contra-rotating propellers [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday June 04 2019, @01:15PM
I think you'll find that the second you get into the kinds of power needed for any of those technologies, self-sustaining electrical systems are out of the question.
The batteries get too large, which makes them too heavy, which means you need *even more* power, and so on.
If it was easy, it would have been done by amateurs already, and any other aeronautical firm would blow them all out of the water.
Fact is, things like heating stuff up with electricity is just about the worst possible use of it that you can have... other technologies are generally so power that heat is *waste* from the process that you have to get rid of. With electrical systems, heat is an undesirable, power-hungry side-effect that you try to avoid at all costs because anything making things hot is generally wasting more energy than the thing you're trying to do.
Pretty much the same for sound - any sound is waste energy, but you have an enormous excess of energy that you can't contain with any traditional engine. With an electrical one, that's not the case, which is why they are only now on the cusp of viability (if you don't count milk floats loaded down with lead-acid batteries in the UK from about the 60's) - you literally are needing to squeeze everything you can out of every Watt... not because you can't throw more Watts at the system, but because you can't put that amount of Watts into a storage mechanism that you can carry with you.
You could maybe do it if you made something that could start from a glide, say, get up speed, and then glide back for the landing. But actual electrical-powered flight while dragging the batteries along with you isn't going to be beating major records any time soon unless there's a real battery / whatever breakthrough.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Tuesday June 04 2019, @09:46AM
Reminds me of an older Cirrus.
Fixed gear has got to cost 20 knots.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Tuesday June 04 2019, @12:42PM
Please make it sound like the Merlin V-12 used in the Spitfire. :-)
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(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday June 04 2019, @03:39PM (3 children)
Why would you optimize a racing plane in order to “accelerate electrification of flight”? The range on one charge must be horrible.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 04 2019, @06:58PM (2 children)
Why would you invest in car racing if you're trying to optimize regular cars ?
That will never work !
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday June 04 2019, @09:17PM (1 child)
But isn’t the primary obstacle to commercially feasible electric aircraft the energy density per unit weight of the storage system? Seems like you’d get more benefit across more forms of transportation (and other stuff!) by just focusing on the battery problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday June 04 2019, @09:41PM
How best to get investment in the battery systems ? By convincing people to part with their money to put their name on a win of some contest, which won't happen unless that battery has the best power density.
Breaking records requires improving tech. Humans like to win stuff, and are a lot less rational with their money when they believe they will win.