Introducing the Celera 800L: The latest laminar flow aircraft

in September 2023 Auto Aviation revealed their New Concept the Selena 800l on their website it is a business jet with nine seats in the passenger cabin this aircraft builds upon its predecessor the Cera 500L which was an aircraft so unique that it got the world talking at present there is not much detail about the newer iteration of the aircraft other than a rendered video from the images it is clear that while the Cera 800l borrows its prolate spero Fus shape from its predecessor but that is where the similarity stops unlike the 500 L which had straight Wings the 800 L has swept Wings the 500 L had a single rear mounted propeller the 800 L on the other hand has two jet engines that are can delivered to the rear of the fuse large the 500 L in its EMP page had an upper and lower vertical fin the 800l uses a conventional tail configuration the Cera 800l will take the advantage of leminar flow but will have a higher Cruise speed the term used for this later version is transonic super laminar or TSL design laminar flow in aviation is considered the Holy Grail because it offers the potential of improvement in an aircraft fuel usage range or endurance that far exceed every other technology in principle if flow over 80% of the wing is laminar then overall drag could be reduced by 25% although the introduction of Cera 800l is interesting it is also disheartening to see that auto Aviation has removed all the details of the Cera 500 L from its website this can be an indication of not continuing the aircraft Auto CS that through the 500 L it achieved all the goals it set out to achieve which included a 59% drag reduction Auto Aviation conducted around 55 test flights which had started from 2017 but were kept Under Wraps only in 2020 the company revealed its flight footage for the first time to the world it now looks like that the 500 L and aircraft that showed so much promise will not go into production interestingly Auto Aviation had earlier plans for a 20% larger aircraft which it called the salera th000 L they had stated that the technology is not scalable and it would be difficult for laminar flow to be achieved on an aircraft larger than the 1000l in June 2022 an announcement was made for the salera 750l this was a 1990 seat hydrogen powered aircraft that could be operated on flights up 2,000 nautical miles for the 750l zero Avia a British American hydrogen electric aircraft developer was to provide the z600 hydrogen electric powert train as an alternative propulsion system to the red A3 diesel engine that was being used for the 500 L for the latest iteration that is the 800l the term tronic super laminar flow has been used this indicates that the aircraft will operate in a speed range that is close to the speed of sound typical speeds for a transonic aircraft are greater than 250 mph but less than 760 mph not many specifications have been provided for the 800 L but the cruising speed of 500 mph has been mentioned it is important for tronic aircraft to have swept Wings the main reason for it is the compressibility of air a factor that becomes more prominent as the speed increases the swep wing allows the mark number of an aircraft to be higher than that actually experienced by the wing in other words due to the sweep the flow slows down relatively this happens because as the air hits the Leading Edge it is easier for it to follow the Leading Edge for a bit towards the wing tip before leaping over over to the top of the wing surface this however brings with it a challenge as it induces a lateral velocity component in the air passing over the wing this sideways component disturbs the boundary layer and pushes it towards instability and thus turbulence so it is clear that achieving laminar flow through smoother surfaces which is called natural laminar flow is difficult over the swep wings of the Cera a 800 L there has to be some kind of active control mechanism one has to remember that the NASA x21 a was the first aircraft to achieve laminar flow with swep wings it did it with the section technique the wing had a multiple series of spanwise slots 800,000 in total through which turbulent boundary layer was sucked in resulting in smoother laminar flow it is very likely that the Cera 800 L would use a combination of both natural laminar flow and laminar flow control technology the latter uses active methods like placement of bumps or suction slots or cooling surfaces to keep the boundary layer orderly on Auto aviation's website the use of smooth surfaces on the aircraft has been mentioned on the same web page certain research articles that indicate more active methods of laminar FL flow control are also shown thus the salera 800l is likely to have hybrid laminar flow technology which is the combination of both active and natural method it has to be mentioned that Aviation enthusiasts were excited about the prospect of the salara 500 L materializing there were several reasons for this first and foremost was the low operational cost because of the use of an internal combustion diesel engine however it seems now they won't be getting their wish and might have to wait for the 800 L how long before the Cera 800 L takes to the skies is anybody's guess no dates have been announced for its root map to certification and delivery we will keep you posted with the developments about this aircraft as they become available and with this the video is concluded if you learn something from it then please do give it a thumbs up thank you for your attention you

Channel: Electric Aviation

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Id: GfcAlYqqu_Y

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024