‘Swirl tubes’ make quiet, fuel-efficient jet planes

LONDON - MIT researchers found that the swirl tubes were able to generate large amounts of drag without creating much more noise than is found in the average home.

The experts have claimed that by creating a vortex while flying and during landing, planes can be made quieter and more fuel-efficient.

Zoltan Spakovsky of MIT and his colleagues discovered that ’swirl tubes’ fitted to the wingtips of a plane could make it quiet, reports New Scientist.

Each tube contains an array of fixed vanes that could be open to let air pass through during flight, then tilted to swirl it into a vortex during landing.

Even better, the vanes could be tilted in a slightly different direction while the plane is cruising to siphon power off of natural vortices corkscrewing off the end of the wings, improving fuel efficiency.

Another design calls for vanes to be affixed at the back of each engine to create a vortex in the exhaust.

Compared with Spakovsky’s earlier design for an entirely silent plane, this new idea seems far less radical. (ANI)