The Aerodynamics of Celera 500L

every now and then there comes an aircraft that blows your mind away the slura 500l is one of these it was a breath of fresh air in the doom and gloom of the kovite 19 pandemic not only it looks for something out of the ordinary but so were its specs its high range at high speed is what made it stand out furthermore the small amount of emissions and the low operating cost defied all estimates auto aviation the company that designed the celera 500l has mentioned that it is an aircraft that lends itself well for future propulsion technology and can be converted into electric and hybrid variants in this video we'll closely inspect every design element that makes the aircraft so special and also cover other aircrafts from the past that had a similar design on this channel electric aviation we bring for you all the latest developments from the world of sustainable air travel we also take a deep dive into the technology in our explainer videos subscribe to get all of our latest updates okay let's have a quick look at the specs of celera 500l the aircraft claims to have a maximum range of 4500 nautical miles amazingly this is longer than boeing's 737 it offers an operating cost of 328 dollars per hour and a fuel economy of 18 to 25 miles per gallon which is astounding the max crew speed can be in excess of 460 miles per hour such is the magnitude of these specifications that any aircraft that achieves even half of the performance of what has been mentioned for the solera would be considered game changing auto aviation mentions that these numbers are only possible by keeping laminar flow over the majority of the aircraft's surface area including the wings the result is 59 reduction of drag there are many elements of this design that enhance the aerodynamic efficiency and cut down the power required for the flight let's examine them one by one the first thing that jumps out looking at the solera 500l is its fuselage shape different terms are being used to describe it like the bullet plane the flying cucumber fish fuselage etc in geometric terms this fuselage shape is called the prolate spheroid this shape has superior aerodynamic characteristics such as low drag due to delayed boundary layer separation and for this very reason we have seen the prolate spheroid shape in rugby balls american footballs and even in older airships in a study by nasa the coefficient of drag for the same amount of internal volume of a prolate spheroid compared to a bi-hemispherical cylinder was 15 percent lower also notice the cockpit of the cellera 500l it conforms with the shape of the fuselage unlike many aircrafts where the cockpit creates some form of protrusion in the fuselage and has stagnation surfaces if we look towards nature we see the prolate spheroid existing in some of the fast-moving sea creatures the bodies of dolphins closely match this shape although the shape of solara 500l is slightly more rounded compared to most fish but the side cross-section is similar the question then arises that if the prolate spheroid is more efficient than why many passenger aircrafts don't use this shape well there are multiple reasons for this first it's a difficult shape to scale up when simply looked at from the point of view of manufacturing and mass production the current design for passenger aircraft which is a tubular fuselage is not ideal aerodynamically but has its own benefits firstly it's easy to produce because the tubular fuselage has constant cross-sections same parts can be used such as fuselage frames multiple times and many parts don't need to be modified with varying cross sections as would be needed in a prolate spheroid shape the tubular shape is easy to pressurize it is also easier to extend the tubular fuselage for larger iterations of the same aircraft design for example converting an a318 to a320 or converting a boeing triple seven 200 to a triple seven 300 er this is not to say that fuselage that are close to prolate steroid shape have not been made before lock heat constellation is one example among others that utilize the aerodynamic superiority of the shape however the purpose of larger passenger aircraft is to maximize passengers and cargo space rather than just drag reduction and hence they evolved into the shapes they are the second feature of solera 500l that stands out is the high aspect ratio wings such wings are normally found on gliders the high aspect ratio means they are long and narrow as it is the ratio between the span and cord of the wing the solara 500l has a 57 feet or a 17.3 meter wing span the higher aspect ratio directly impacts on fuel consumption it should be noted that large passenger planes cannot afford to have high aspect ratio wings because of the large wing area requirements and limitations of airfield space but relatively speaking where the aspect ratio is higher the fuel economy is better for example the airbus a380 has an 80 meter wingspan with an aspect ratio of 7.8 while the boeing 787 or the airbus a350 have an aspect ratio of 9.5 thereby influencing flight economy the third noticeable feature of the silera 500l is the position of wings on the fuselage the wings are attached past the mid section of the fuselage in terms of aircraft length this was done to keep the flow laminar on as much as the aircraft body as possible david bogue the cto of auto aviation says that the interception of air by wings is like a sledgehammer to the flow he further mentions that the propeller sits in the back for the same reason a prop in the front would be unfriendly to smooth flow another eye-catching feature is the presence of a ventral fin this serves two purposes firstly the ventral fin reduces the drag caused by the fuselage up sweep this is the drag induced by the upward curvature of the fuselage at the rear end ventral fin therefore is present in blimps and in submarines secondly it also stops the pusher propeller at the back from hitting the ground when landing and taking off at higher angles of attack the need for having a longer landing gear at the back to prevent a tail strike is eliminated because of the ventral fin and thus shorter and lighter landing gear can be used the silera 500l is very rare other than in blimps you rarely find ventral fin with a vertical stabilizer and horizontal stabilizers in an aircraft the german world war ii aircraft the dornier do-335 is one of the very few examples of this configuration the horizontal stabilizers here are the ones to be appreciated they are elliptical in shape and that is a platform shape which minimizes induced drag and finally we see a 5 blade pusher propeller at the back that is optimized for weight versus power that it generates the pusher propeller at the back is the hallmark of so many electric planes being developed at the moment this is a propulsion system that aids boundary layer ingestion by accelerating the boundary layer in the region where it would have detached it delays separation thereby reducing the overall form drag studies conducted by nasa have shown nine percent reduction for boundary layer ingestion propulsives compared to non-boundary layer ingestion propulsion systems there are two massive air inlet cowlings at the back auto aviation is aiming to remove these they provide large quantity of air needed for the cooling of the existing red a03 engine with electric propulsion these would not be required thereby improving the aerodynamic efficiency even more we will cover this in detail in our future video on the electrification of celera 500l overall the celera 500l is a very well engineered aircraft that brings together all the elements of efficient aerodynamic design but contrary to popular belief it is not the first aircraft of such shape to have been attempted the first pro-late spheroid shape aircraft was the planet satellite it was designed by major dundas henan in the uk in the 1940s from its pictures one can see that the satellite was very futuristic looking even by today's standards the satellite's first flight test was in april 1949 it was less of a flight and more of a hop investigations revealed that the aircraft was massively underpowered this is understandable as the materials available then were much heavier compared to today the aircraft also had short and stubby wings with low aspect ratio which didn't help despite securing funding the aircraft didn't see progress in its development and production it would be also worthwhile to mention here a more recent aircraft called the voltaire it was developed by european aeronautic defense and space company which was later renamed the airbus group the voltaire emerged in 2011 and has many similarities with the solera 500l these include the fuselage shape low aspect ratio wings and pusher propeller although the propulsion system designed for voltaire was ducted and it had not one but two coaxial propellers so yes there have been attempts in the past to make such an aircraft but what makes the solera 500l unique compared to both the mentioned aircraft is that it has more than 30 successful flights under its belt and this is why the aircraft is a real and exciting development rather than just a jazzed up render and with this the video is concluded we hope you would have enjoyed and learned something from it if you did please do give it a thumbs up thank you for your attention

Channel: Electric Aviation

Views: 150,395

Keywords: Celera 500L, Sustainable Airtravel, Prolate Spheroid Fuselage, Fish Shape Fuselage

Id: I34o1OSnqFo

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020