View: | Click here to view the article |
Title: | The Economist explains - How dangerous are aircraft-engine failures? | The Economist explains |
Date: | 2/24/2021 5:54:29 AM |
Summary: | Two dramatic engine breakdowns - in America and the Netherlands - cause concern THERE ARE few things as bone-chilling as the thought of an aircraft engine exploding in mid-flight, particularly if you happen to be in a seat close to the fast-flying debris. Such accidents are exceedingly rare. But two incidents involving engine failures on February 20th - one affecting a passenger plane over Denver, the other a freighter over Meerssen, in the southern Netherlands - have raised worries. What causes an aircraft engine to blow up? And why are these accidents typically not as catastrophic as instinct suggests they should be? Today, most commercial planes fly by generating thrust from jet engines. Their encased fan blades suck air and compress it. This is mixed with jet fuel and burned in the combustion chamber, which creates a jet, propelling the aircraft forward. (The whooshing exhaust exiting from tailpipes is the “equal and opposite” force that Isaac Newton popularised.) Jet engines are more technologically advanced than piston engines, which were originally developed for steam trains and steamboats and were favoured by aircraft designers until the 1940s. Such powerplants simply convert pressure into rotating motion. For aviators, they can be used to spin propellers rapidly enough to generate forward thrust. A third type of powerplant - the turboprop - looks similar to the piston engine by dint of its external propellers, but behaves more like a jet engine. With fewer moving parts than piston engines, jet engines are much less susceptible to mechanical failure. And even if they suffer a breakdown, parallel advances in aerodynamic engineering mean that modern planes can fly safely for several hours with just one functioning engine. This has allowed regulators to ease restrictions on flying long distances away from airports, such as for trans-oceanic journeys. Such is the reliability of modern jet engines that the requirement that transatlantic... |
Organization: | Economist |
Date Added: | 2/24/2021 10:02:28 AM |
===================================================================== |