Transporting rotor blades is currently a rather arduous task. Now an American research team wants to build the world‘s longest aircraft to date to make transportation easier.
Quelle: WindRunner
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, an American research team “Radia” led by aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom is working on the development of the WindRunner. The aircraft is expected to be the longest in the world and also have the largest cargo capacity. Up until now, wind turbine components were mainly transported by road using trucks. But the rotor blades in particular are getting bigger and bigger, so the right means of transport needs to be found.
The cargo plane will have a total length of 109 meters. For comparison: a football field is 105 meters long. In the future, the mega aircraft could transport either one large rotor blade or up to four smaller rotor blades at the same time. This would make the WindRunner about 39 meters longer than the Boeing 747, the largest passenger aircraft. With a height of around 24 meters and a wingspan of around 79.5 meters, the WindRunner will be a true giant of the skies. At a speed of 0.6 Mach, it should be able to carry a maximum load of 72,575 kilograms, i.e. 72 tons.
The introduction of the giant aircraft therefore has the potential to revolutionize the onshore wind energy sector. By overcoming the transport hurdles, wind turbines with significantly higher output could be installed on land, whereas previously such turbines could only be installed offshore. A real high-flyer in the truest sense of the word.
Airplane of superlatives
But where do you land such a giant? Conventional runways are generally not large enough, so some runways would probably need to be redesigned for this purpose. Therefore, Radia wants to work with aircraft manufacturers to avoid the need to redevelop components. Because that could make the development process even more difficult.
In the future, Lundstrom hopes to expand the aircraft’s uses beyond the wind energy sector and potentially also serve the military and oil and gas industries. The WindRunner is supposed to be built at the end of 2027.