Airbus patents aircraft cabins shaped like doughnuts

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=2014319274A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=3&date=20141030&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP

by mwc • 12 years ago

43 53 12 years ago

worldwide.espacenet.com

mwc3• 12 years ago

Interesting from the FT [1]:

Airbus said although the design was worthwhile enough to protect with a patent — like about 6,000 other ideas its engineers devise every year — it was not an immediate prospect for shuttling passengers from Heathrow to JFK. “This is not something that’s currently under active development,” Airbus said.

[1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba80c518-6492-11e4-b219-00144...

caoilte• 12 years ago

Make patents 100x more expensive and see if they still think that.

thisjepisje• 12 years ago

What problem would that solve?

javert• 12 years ago

Yeah, we definitely don't want Airbus to come up with new ideas. Fuck those guys.

whacker• 12 years ago

it will create a market where only the rich can get patents - precisely the opposite of what I presume you hope to achieve.

philwelch• 12 years ago

One surprising thing I learned is that large companies like to mass-produce patents, even ones they have no intention of ever implementing or suing over. Why? Because they provide a MAD defense against patent suits. If Boeing ever sued Airbus for violating patents, Airbus could countersue and, odds are, each company is violating some patent of the other. Also, if each company has 10,000 patents applying to aerospace, it's going to take each company's legal team a lot of time to sort through them and figure out which ones they can countersue over. Time = money; a patent attorney's time especially so. So coming up with as many patents as possible makes it expensive (often prohibitively so) to sue over patents.

Your natural reaction might be to think this is an outrageous waste of people's time, and you'd be right. But if you don't do it, your competitors will and you will be vulnerable to patent suits that, because of how this works, are essentially impossible for you to avoid making yourself vulnerable to.

damon_c• 12 years ago

Will there be windows in the doughnut hole?

mwc3• 12 years ago

It looks like 2 exit doors.

On that note, how would this affect the all important question of how to most efficiently board an aircraft?

Gravityloss• 12 years ago

My bet is that airplanes will look just the same in 2070 as they did in 1970...

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

The only thing that needs to change imo is space. If you got an extra ft width on the seat and an extra 2-3 ft between each row the increase in comfort would significantly improve the experience. I'm not a big guy or a very tall guy (6ft1in) but space is my one complaint about air travel. I can deal with all the other BS but being uncomfortable with practically no way of improving it when on a flight longer than a couple of hours is so frustrating.

Edit: Obviously this is from the perspective of a passenger. Planes could become more energy efficient, faster etc. etc.

saryant2• 12 years ago

It exists: first and business class.

In fact, domestic first class fares in the US have been really cheap lately, often just a $100-200 premium over coach.

remarkEon• 12 years ago

Currently on a plane (6ft3in).

Honestly I think that most of what we've seen is horizontal innovation...we're essentially just making the experience "nicer" and not really doing anything about the technical aspect of traveling. We're not flying faster, planes are not any bigger (really, not that much), and the airport experience is terrible.

autarch• 12 years ago

Some airlines (like Delta) offer "economy comfort" seats which give you access at ticket purchase time to some of the best seats on the plane, including bulkhead and exit rows. I'm 6'7" so I always pay the extra bit for these seats. It runs anywhere from $25-100 one way.

I flew from Minneapolis to Taiwan earlier this year and those seats made all the difference. I had as much leg room as any business or first class seat I've been in.

The key is to make sure you use http://seatguru.com while you're picking your seats.

prawn3• 12 years ago

I could see something novel changing for smaller craft flying a few hundred km, so that loading passengers and cargo was far more efficient. e.g., an electric plane that was propelled into the air and then would glide the remaining distance.

jbinto• 12 years ago

Airbus. That makes a lot more sense. I initially read that as Airbnb.

marak830• 12 years ago

Me too haha, insufficient coffee -.-

davidw2• 12 years ago

AIRCRAFT INCLUDING A PASSENGER CABIN EXTENDING AROUND A SPACE DEFINED OUTSIDE THE CABIN AND INSIDE THE AIRCRAFT

So then they're not deck chairs on top of the plane? I'm not much up on plane design, but where exactly is "outside the cabin, but inside the aircraft" ?

peteretep• 12 years ago

The passenger cabin extends around a space. That space is located outside of the passenger cabin, but inside the aircraft.

jws• 12 years ago

A brief scan suggests they are engulfing an unpressurized section of airplane volume since unpressurized sections don't weigh as much.

jpatokal3• 12 years ago

Read the friendly headline: it's a doughnut-shaped plane, meaning there's a hole ("outside the cabin") in the middle ("inside the aircraft").

davidw2• 12 years ago

I get it, it's just worded in a really strange way.

gameshot911• 12 years ago

I imagine it'd be uncomfortable to be seated at an angle askew to the takeoff/landing vector.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

This, if you've ever ridden in the jump seats of a jet and felt your head and guts go sideways during climb out it is very disconcerting. You know that feeling that the jet it tilting way up when your sitting forward? You get the tilt is really sideways when you are sitting sideways. I expect you get used to it but it no doubt makes those seats hard to sell.

stefan_kendall3• 12 years ago

The seats of a plane are never sold uniform price, I guess except on southwest.

I'd take the side seats to save money, and others would as well. I also sit behind the engine when it's cheaper.

louthy• 12 years ago

This happens in business class on many airlines (long haul). I've never felt it to be a problem at all.

jschwartzi• 12 years ago

Seating that's displaced far from the centerline of the aircraft would also be less comfortable during banked turns. The sensation of falling or rising would be greater the farther you are from the centerline because you're moving through a larger displacement around the axis, and also at a higher rate.

Incidentally this style of aircraft looks really wide and flat.

jpatokal3• 12 years ago

Any aeronautical engineers around who could give us the TL;DR of just why it's a good idea to have a hole in the middle? To a layman (me) it would seem seriously destabilizing to have a hole that's perpendicular to the direction of flight, esp. since a delta wing seems to pull off more or less the same shape without the hole.

mwc3• 12 years ago

Not an aeronautical engineer, but understand that the cylindrical shape used in today's aircraft design is very good at containing the stresses of a pressurised cabin.

However, the design does mean significant pressure stress on the front and rear of the cylinder. This must be managed with extensive (heavy) structures.

A doughnut design, in theory at least, solves for this by removing "the ends" of the cylinder.

delinka2• 12 years ago

Layman here. Looks to me like the outside of the aircraft would remain solid, while these 'doughnut walls' would be strictly internal to help with airframe strength.

rnbrady• 12 years ago

Another layman here. In claim 1 it refers to "a space outside the structure" which to me implies this is literally a hold right through the aircraft. EDIT: I think I'm wrong here, the structure refers just to the cabin.

NickNameNick• 12 years ago

I think the donut hole would be used as unpressurised cargo space for luggage, moving the floor of the cabin closer to the bottom of the pressurised envelope, and reducing the strength and fastening requirements of having a pressure bearing floor separating the pressurised cabin space in the top half of a cylindrical aircraft fuselage from an unpressurised cargo space below.

I don't think any aircraft are built that way though, so I'm a little confused.

whiskypeters• 12 years ago

Initially I thought the "hole" was meant to be enclosed within the airframe, but it is there. See Fig 2 - Fig 8 in the patent application. They have even diagrammed a method for boarding passengers using retractable escalators from parallel hatches located on the forward and aft planes of the inner-torus, as well as using an elevator to board passengers from within the hole! Fig 9 - Fig 16 diagram the invention applied to a more conventional airframe (without the hole).

The patent title is "aircraft including a passenger cabin extending around a space defined outside the cabin and inside the aircraft." My understanding is that the patent covers the torus-shaped passenger cabin within any larger aerodynamic envelope as a method of reducing constraints related to cabin pressurization (the "hole" is incidental). Very interesting stuff. I'm not an aeronautical engineer or patent attorney.

dalke2• 12 years ago

Paragraph 0030 says that figure 2 is without the aerodynamic envelope. The aerodynamic envelope is labeled 22, and visible in figure 7. Other parts of the description mention how the hole can be filled with cargo or other items, and that a non-pressure skin can be used as a cover.

SchizoDuckie• 12 years ago

Am I the only one here wondering why the layout of an airplane interior be something patentable?

xpda• 12 years ago

It should not be patentable, but, unfortunately, the bar is very low at the moment.

cscurmudgeon• 12 years ago

The silly aircraft engineers and their obvious physics. /s

delinka2• 12 years ago

It's not "layout of an airplane interior" but "a way to strengthen aircraft of a certain shape." Something like this is patentable because it apparently wasn't obvious and seems to be a good improvement.

josaka• 12 years ago

Neat idea. Minor correction: This is a published patent application, not a patent. According to USPTO records, it published last month, but examination has not begun.

hcarvalhoalves• 12 years ago

Spaceplane?

This doughnut creates a neat lifting body design.

Airbus patents aircraft cabins shaped like doughnuts

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