Headline February 07, 2017/ ''' *SCIENCE* OF TECHNOLOGY '''

''' *SCIENCE* OF TECHNOLOGY '''

STUDENTS : Mustafa Imran  &   Hasaan Masood  are  both  studying Electrical Engineering.  Mustafa Imran  at  LUMS, and  Hasaan Masood at FAST.

Never a long month passes, when I don't get to hear, their  distinguished parents debate their future, and their plans and hopes for both of them. I get enthralled by the kaleidoscope composing that follows.

Here, at  *Proud Pakistan*  unless ones thinking and abstraction is weird, mysterious, mystique-bent, one normally does not merit more than a cursory attention  But then, this good lad arrived, to clear many fogs:

Dr. Auon Muhammad Akhtar, Electrical-Electronics Engineer, MS/ King's College, PhD, King's College, UK,  an   Operating Field Application Engineering  bulb  at  Nutaq,  Quebec City, Canada. I thank him for his profound tutorials over many hours.

His visiting card says : *Innovation Today For Tomorrow*. True! So see you, Doc,  on !WOW!   -the World Students Society. 

WHEN DIDIER ESTEYNE, AN  AIRBUS  TEST PILOT,  flew a small two-seat  electrically powered  aircraft called the E-Fan across the English Channel, in July 2015-

The giant European aerospace group was keen to point out the journey was not a gimmick. Indeed, Airbus is serious enough about  electric flight to want to put the  E-Fan into  production as a  pilot-training aircraft.

It will go on sale towards the end of 2017 to be followed by a  four-seat version.

Airbus is not alone in thinking about making much bigger electric and hybrid aircraft to carry passengers. Just as in cars, electrical propulsion offers a number of advantages over piston and jet engines.

Modern, digitally controlled electric motors supply lots of  torque, a rotational force which is as good as turning propellers and fan blades as it is  wheels,  Electric power is also quiet, clean and highly reliable, with fewer engine parts to wear or break.

Batteries, it is true, do not provide the range many would like : lithium-ion ones allow the E-Fan to fly for about an hour with a 30-minute reserve. They may be fine for a flying lesson, but not for a passenger airliner.

Batteries, though, are steadily improving and, because aircraft have long service lives [the Boeing 747 first flew in 1969], aerospace engineers work on projects set well into the future.

What really excites them about electric propulsion is that it provides the opportunity to build radically different aircraft, like the Airbus E-Thrust concept.

The idea is that instead of hanging big and heavy jet engines below the wing, a greater number of small and lighter electrically driven fans or propellers could instead be incorporated into other areas of an aircraft.

Doing this with lots of small conventional engines would be complicated and and would add a lot of weight. But electric motors make the concept, called *distributed electric propulsion [DEP]*, feasible.

The advantage of distributing power is that it can be used to increase the airflow over the wings and thus allow an aircraft to fly more efficiently. 

''DEP enables a fundamental shift in how we design aircraft,'' says Mark Moore, principal investigator into electric flight at NASA's Langley Research Centre in Virginia.

NASA is testing a  DEP wing mounted above a truck and driven at high speed across a dry lake bed at  Edwards Air Force Base in California. The wing uses  18 small, electric propellers strung along its leading edge. 

The next step is a project called Sceptor, which involves replacing the wing on a conventional  four-seater light aircraft   -in this case, a twin-engined Italian built  Tecnam P20061  with a DEP wing containing a dozen or so electrically driven propellers. Scpetor is due to begin test flights in 2017.

Sceptor's line of small propellers will increase the aircraft's lift at lower speeds, allowing it to take off and land on shorter runways.

It also means the wing could be made more slender, perhaps only a third of the width of the wing on a conventional aircraft, thus saving weight and fuel costs. Typically, the wing on a light aircraft is relatively large to prevent it from stalling  [which happens at low airspeeds, when the wing cannot provide sufficient lift].

But large wings are not very efficient when an aircraft is cruising because they create a lot of drag. Secptor's wing will be optimised for cruise, yet still provide enough lift to help prevent stalling on   take-off or  landing.

The wing will also be capable of other tricks. The speed of each electric propeller can be controlled independently, which provides the ability to change the pattern of airflow over the wing to cope with rapidly changing flying conditions, such as wind gusts.

When cruising, the propellers close to the fuselage could be folded back, leaving those on the wing tips to do the work. 

If Sceptor's test flights are a success, the technology could be incorporated into a small commuter aircraft within a decade, even with present progress in battery development.

These aircraft, says Mr Moore, would have no in-flight emissions, be extremely quiet and reduce operating costs by around 30%.  

The Honour & Serving   of the     ''Operational Research on Electrical Engineering'  continues.   Thank Ya all for reading and for sharing forward. And see you on the following one.

With respectful dedication to the Scientists, Students, Professors and Teachers of Electrical Engineering. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' !WOW! Flight '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless