MAROKO133 Hot ai: RTX’s hybrid aviation system passes test with engine, batteries running

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: RTX’s hybrid aviation system passes test with engine, batterie

RTX has reached a key milestone in its hybrid-electric propulsion project, successfully running its system’s engine and batteries at full power for the first time.

The Virginia-based aerospace and defense conglomerate aims to deliver a 30 percent improvement in fuel efficiency over current advanced regional turboprops with its Hybrid-Electric Flight Demonstrator. The successful test could pave the way for more fuel-efficient, greener regional aircraft.

RTX eyes electrified regional flights

Electric aviation systems have great potential with their high torque, great efficiency, and zero emissions. However, these systems have a far lower energy density when compared with traditional internal combustion engines.

Electric systems are far too heavy to power a long-haul flight. Instead, companies like RTX are looking to start off electrifying shorter regional flights as they mature their technology.

RTX performed its latest test at a Pratt & Whitney Canada facility near Montreal. The company’s Hybrid-Electric Flight Demonstrator features a thermal engine from Pratt & Whitney Canada, a 1-megawatt electric motor from Collins Aerospace, and a 200-kilowatt-hour battery system from Swiss startup H55.

While operating, the thermal engine handles cruise phases, while the electric motor assists during taxi, takeoff, and climb, drawing power from the batteries.

As RTX points out in a press statement, thermal engines typically convert 30-40 percent of fuel into useful energy, with the rest lost to heat and friction. Electrical systems, meanwhile, achieve over 90 percent efficiency.

RTX has stated its system will be installed on a modified De Havilland Canada Dash 8-100 for flight testing. To make these tests possible, the company’s engineers have addressed major challenges, including battery weight and high-voltage management. To reduce weight, the team used advanced materials, wide band-gap semiconductors, and high-density magnets.

“We have some of the highest power density motors and motor controllers across the industry that we’re developing right now,” Joshua Parkin, Collins Aerospace engineering director explained in a press statement. “Every pound, every kilogram, it counts.”

Addressing high-voltage management

Hybrid-electric propulsion for regional aircraft requires thousands of battery cells. These are linked together and operate at high voltage levels. While this leads to an efficient system, it also creates a risk of overheating or electrical arcing, where electricity jumps out of the battery in the form of a miniature lightning bolt.

“The voltage level we’re using for our system surpasses anything that’s in production right now in aviation,” noted David Venditti, Pratt & Whitney’s program manager.

To address the issue of high-voltage management, the team added safety features into its battery design, including a fireproof enclosure for venting gases.

Crucially, RTX’s battery system is also based on startup H55’s flight-proven technology. According to H55 it has flight-tested its technology on a smaller aircraft with over 2,000 incident-free hours of electric flight time, providing a solid, certified foundation. Next, RTX will continue to perform ground and flight testing in a bid to bring electric flight closer to reality.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Looks Like the Economy Is Hitting a “Nightmare Scenario”

Tankers in the Strait of Hormuz have ground to a halt, cutting off much of the world from vital oil supplies due to the United States’ war on Iran.

Dwindling supplies and cut output by oil producers are sending rippling effects across global markets. As S&P Global vice chair Daniel Yergin argued in a Financial Times essay, it’s looking like a “nightmare scenario” is now unfolding as skyrocketing oil prices “send the world economy plummeting into a deep recession” — a reckoning that’s been decades in the making.

The Strait of Hormuz has turned into a major chokepoint, with around 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas and oil supply typically traveling through its waters.

Now that tankers aren’t taking the risk of being targeted by Iranian drones or weaponized speedboats, that crucial artery has been largely cut off. While Yergin argues Asia could be hit hardest sooner, global oil and gas markets across the world will be “grappling with the crisis.”

The price of crude oil soared past $100 a barrel over the weekend as production slowed significantly. Americans are already feeling the effects at the gas pump, with prices surging for both gasoline and diesel.

On Wall Street, grim effects are playing out, with Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq futures plummeting. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 slid by a percent or so when trading resumed Monday morning.

Put simply, investors are seriously on edge as they fear the worst: a prolonged war in Iran causing major oil shortages.

Worse yet, domestically, a “flashing red warning light” went off last week when the US Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its February jobs report, finding that the economy had shrunk by 92,000 jobs — far more than expected, raising the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent.

And impossible to ignore are existing fears and uncertainty over enormous investments in AI. Companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on enormous data centers across the country, unprecedented capital expenditures that are seemingly propping up a waning US economy — while also making investors nervous.

While it sounds like a perfect storm, the budding crisis takes place in a very different economic order compared to previous oil supply shocks.

It’s a precarious moment. And President Donald Trump indicated over the weekend that the administration won’t be tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease the pressure.

“We’ve got a lot of oil,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “Our country has a tremendous amount. There’s a lot of oil out there. That’ll get healed very quickly.”

The Trump administration also promised a $20 billion reinsurance — insurance for insurance — program to get oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz again.

But whether the president’s reassurances will be able to calm the situation as Wall Street sees red remains to be seen, as the end of his war on Iran is seemingly nowhere in sight.

The “world is looking at the biggest disruption in oil production in history as well as a resounding shock to global gas markets,” Yergin concluded. “The key question for global energy markets now is the duration of this explosive war.”

More on oil prices: Gas Prices Spiking After Trump’s War in Iran

The post Looks Like the Economy Is Hitting a “Nightmare Scenario” appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com