Aircraft

Active turbulence cancellation makes bumpy flights 80% smoother

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Five-hole pressure sensors mounted in front of each wing
Turbulence Solutions
Pressure sensors in front of the wings give the system a fraction of a second to respond to turbulence
Turbulence Solutions
The company has already done enough manned flight tests to say it'll have a system commercially available by next year
Turbulence Solutions
The system greatly reduces those spikes in vertical acceleration we feel in our stomachs
Turbulence Solutions
Five-hole pressure sensors mounted in front of each wing
Turbulence Solutions
Unmanned test aircraft
Turbulence Solutions
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Austrian company Turbulence Solutions claims it's already flight-testing a system that can detect and neutralize air turbulence, reducing the forces felt by passengers by up to 80% – and reducing fuel burn by up to 10%. It's set to launch in 2024.

Nobody likes to fly through turbulence – which is tough luck, because climate change has already caused it to increase by as much as 55% on some popular routes, and it's projected to continue getting worse as temperatures rise, bringing wind speeds and thus wind shear along with them.

Where it can be accurately predicted, airliners will often go out of their way to go around it, hoping to avoid a whole lot of passenger distress as well as showers of vomit. But in clear air, it's nigh-on impossible to spot turbulence until you're in the middle of it, guts in your throat and praying for a quick death.

Enter Turbulence Solutions, which claims to have built and tested something that solves the problem, acting a little like an active noise cancellation system in a pair of headphones. Effectively, it detects turbulence just before it happens, and uses super-quick automated lift adjustment through the aircraft's control surfaces to generate forces in opposition to the turbulence.

Unmanned test aircraft
Turbulence Solutions

To predict what's about to hit the wings, the system uses 5-hole differential air pressure probes, mounted as far forward as possible. On the unmanned testbed above, for example, the company placed a pair of lightweight rails on front of the aircraft, holding up a third rail with the pressure sensors held out nearly as far as the wing tips.

On the manned test aircraft, the sensors were instead mounted directly to the wings, on long pole masts that placed them some 2.65 m (8.69 ft) forward of the leading edges. At cruise speed, that's enough to give the system a tenth of a second's worth of advance warning before turbulence hits – and according to a paper published by the CEAS Aeronautical Journal in 2021, the system was able to predict vertical accelerations greater than 30 m/sec/sec with an accuracy of nearly 62% on its very first test flight, and it's doubtless improved since then.

Pressure sensors in front of the wings give the system a fraction of a second to respond to turbulence
Turbulence Solutions

Armed with this information, the flight control system now has a tenth of a second to generate a force-canceling response at each wing, by deftly actuating low-inertia lift surfaces. In this way, the system is able to iron out vertical accelerations, pitch and roll changes, and wing bending moments. The Turbulence Solutions team claims it currently cuts down the effects of turbulence in the cabin by around 80%.

You can see the system going bonkers to smooth out a bumpy manned test flight in the video below.

In an interview with Interesting Engineering, a company representative said it also enables significant fuel savings of up to 10%, since aircraft no longer need to climb, dive, or route around turbulence. That's nothing to sniff at.

The company says it'll have a system commercially available for light aircraft in 2024. It's looking into a version for eVTOL air taxis by 2026, and hoping to have a system relevant to commercial airliners by 2030. Godspeed, team, the world's airline passengers – not to mention cleaning crews – need you to succeed.

Source: Turbulence Solutions via Interesting Engineering

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6 comments
paul314
In theory, you could even use doppler radar/lidar of the right wavelengths to do remote sensing on air movements. But getting the mechanical version working first is probably much simpler.
Vladimir "Vlawed" Premise
I believe turbulence serves a vital instructive experience for pilots and am deeply hesitant of any attempt to mitigate it.
Trylon
It's about time. The B-1 bomber was designed with a structural mode control system (SMCS) back in the '70s that took the bumps out using a couple of small active control vanes under the cockpit. Considering how much faster computers have gotten since then, it shouldn't have taken this long.
Dug
We already use something like this in our radio control model airplanes. They are rate gyros, usually called stabilizers. They smooth outh the effects of the bumpy air on windy days. The difference here is that they have moved the sensors out in front of the aircraft, anticipating the disturbance, instead of just reacting to it. Brilliant idea!
BlueOak
Forget the improved comfort - if it scales up effectively, the 10% fuel savings would be the huge sales point.
Ranscapture
@BlueOak forget the comfort and energy savings! Imagine when it falsely predicts something and doubles the turbulence and wrecks a commercial passenger get.