Bird Brainstorming

Seems like we already did this and it was pretty much determined that airports that employed Falconers had fairly good results. I did a quick check and see Bob C was last poster to a discussion, under the same name.

Why don't they have a conical wire cage put on the engine intake to deflect birds away from the engine intake? Seems like a very simple solution to protect the engines since the bird populations are increaseing yearly. Or is this just a too simple idea, like putting an air cleaner on your cars throttle body to stop foreign matter from entering your car engine and destroying it. Won't work on props, but seems to me it will work on all jet intakes.

I am sure that the Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney companies have tried that......it obviously did not help......

I would guess a wire cage would turn the goose into french fries before it was ingested into the aircraft engine. Would a jet engine handle a goose that was sliced and diced or would it be better to puree the goose first? That would take multiple layers of wire cages which would interrupt air flow, and then how well would the turbine pass it through?

All manner of things have been tried. Some low speed aircraft (notably helicopters) have particle separators on their inlets. For helicopters, though, this need is defined more by the operating environment; ie, low and in the dirt and dust. Airliners normally fly high in clean air (as long as they don't try to fly thru volcano plumes). I flew on unprotected helicopters (not as a pilot) for over 2000 hours and only personally witnessed 2 engine flameouts. One was from trying to fly though a very heavy rainstorm that put the fires out, and the other was my fault. I dumped water into an engine too quickly during an after flight wash. Yes, we did wash running engines with water.

For high-speed aircraft, there are a lot of other factors to consider. Maximum engine efficiency, fuel consumption, laminar inlet flow, noise, and on and on and on.

Most of all it's a balance of risk vrs reward. Putting anything in front of a turbo-jet engine inlet is going to negatively impact engine operation 100% of the time. This is not good when you consider that the odds of foreign material ingestion taking out both engines of a modern jetliner simultaneously are extremely low.

And, even as much as we wish in this nanny nation, flying perfectly safe 100% of the time is impossible.

Hooker

If the air cleaner on your car suddenly becomes clogged, your car will slow to the point that you will have to have your car towed to a repair shop. The aircraft tow trucks are under development. How big do you think an air filter would have to be for the engines on a 757?

Bob, I was actually thinking of the A380. Engine test, Seen frozen turkeys being tossed into the engine at full rev 1 at a time. They didn't toss a flock of them.

Was actually thinking of a wired deflecting cone attached. After reading IQ and Hooker, I believe there would be such noise created from this, they would have removed them anyways. Just thinking since the bird population has grown so much around airports, that it would be best to some how protect the people from falling out of the sky, not all pilots have the luxury of doing what Sully did, and I doubt another pilot would have had the same outcome.

I never take my cars or truck to the shop. If I can't repair them, they can't be.

it decrease the volume of air into the intake and because it is a place for ice to form that will choke the air off.

I figured there had to be some rational explanation to leave the intakes wide open. There have been many more bird strikes this past week. There has to be some way to protect the engines, maybe only when birds are present. Some type of deflector that can retract when flock is out of the way.

well i know that we cannont use a wire cage directly over the intake because it restricts the intake flow. But how about if we used some kind of wire or aerodynamically sound obstruction that does not cause any detrimental change to the intake flow but causes an obstruction to birds flying in a path towards the engine.

Welcome to the insanity.

If you do anything to try to divert the birds, you will likely end up with reduced engine performance.

the problemwith wire meshing is that it collects ice and then chokes off the intake of the engine.

I agree with jimh77, is it just me or has the bird in the engine thing only been happening to large airliners, older fighter planes didn't seem to get this happening. I refer to planes like the British lightning which had a large air intake and a cone covering it.

Now there will probably be people who say that the bird population is higher and that was some time ago, but it could work and we won't know until someone tries it.

It did not cover the intake, ....the intake was "around" the cone.....also radar and stuff were hidden in the cone.....

Bird strikes happen all the time. You just don't hear about them because they don't often result in catastrophic occurrences like the Airbus. In 3000 or so flight hours I've personally seen a half dozen or so bird strikes but only one produced damage to an aircraft.

That particular incident was a turkey buzzard that panicked and dove down through the blades of my CH-53. We were flying about 500 or so feet below him when he came down. He struck dead on the nose into the access door to our radar system. Left a huge imprint in the sheet metal but did not get into the cockpit. We were probably going about 160 mph.

After I thought about it, I had the shakes. If he had impacted 3 feet or so higher he may have come straight through the center windshield and likely would have taken me out. I was sitting in the jumpseat between the pilots when it happened, looking directly out the center windshield.

When we landed and inspected the nose we found we had sheetmetal and some minor structural damage. Not bad enough to keep us from flying home and getting it fixed.

Look around the net with Google. You'll see lots of examples documented in videos and a lot more that aren't documented. It's a good thing birds have been designed by evolution (or God, if you're so inclined) to be lightweight or we'd see many more catastrophic accidents. One source on the net claims the US alone suffers $600 million in damages yearly from birdstrikes, both military and civilian aircraft.

Hooker

Most bird strikes that destroy an engine do not make headlines because the other engine continues to fly the aircraft, until it lands.

What about high frequency sound generating horns around the airfield and runway. I used to have these dodgy looking $10 little stick on cones on my front bumper that are supposed to keep animals away.

I didn't really know if they worked or not until I recently had a n accident and the front bumper got replaced (with no new little dodgy cones).

Since then I have had animals and birds that I never noticed before (I live in the bush a bit).

They also are using these to keep pirates away from cruiseliners.

The only problem, in my opinion, with this idea is the land the airfield is on usually has some sort of environmental pact to fulfil and chasing away birds in this manner will probably chase more than birds away.

I think the neighbors would have a huge fit on the noise levels. The Intl AP where I live has grown all around the residences back yards. 1 reason the A380 can come here. Runways too short. People refuse to move and blocked additional new runways. I can imagine what they would do with added noise. They were there b4 the AP.

How about growing foods the birds like away from airports and control the flight paths of birds with a natural food supply along the way.

The amount of money spent to control birds now makes this feasible.

This last week Ft. Laud released an aerosol spray to annoy the nesting birds. It is supposed to have a smell that will annoy the birds, causing them to nest elsewhere.