This is an utopian solution to overcome the shortage of areas for airport construction: circular runways

After many research efforts, Hesslink and his team concluded that the runway should be made in a circle.

The design of the airport can be changed by adding this and that, but the design of the runway - a straight line for take-off and landing aircraft - remains unchanged and many people think, perhaps it will never change. But Dutch researcher Henk Hesselink thinks differently. He proposed the idea of ​​a non-linear runway that would potentially change the entire industry and, moreover, much more efficient.

Since 2012, Hesselink and his team at the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in the Netherlands have studied a new model of a runway shaped like a circle rather than a straight line.

Endless Runway Project - Endless Runway Project is invested by Europe's Saturday Design Framework Program along with a number of other leading research institutions that have designed a circular design, at which the machine Flight can take off from any direction to their advantage. More specifically, any direction without wind across the fuselage, makes taking / landing difficult.

In an interview with Co.Design, researcher Hesselink spoke about the dangers of horizontal winds like that. He came up with the idea of ​​a windy runway when watching 'scary' landing movies online, short videos showing the influence of the wind across him on a plane moving sharply. what level However, he also made it clear that such winds look scary, but in fact they are "in the district" on a traditional straight runway.

When the wind blows lightly, they will not affect the take-off and landing much, but when they get stronger many times, the entire road will be closed to avoid any unfortunate risks that can take place. The closure of the airstrip affects not only the airport itself, but also the entire global flight network.

This phenomenon also often takes place at airports near the sea. For example, like Hesselink, for example, the Amsterdam airport often had to change the runway because it was very strong and strong. For small airports with not many runways, the wind will stop all existing flights.

But, the new roundabout system Hesselink designed, with a diameter of about 3.5 km and a circumference of nearly 10 km (9.97 km), would allow two planes to land at the same time. strong wind phenomenon occurred. Because there were always two areas on this roundabout in the same direction as the wind, making it possible to take off. Under normal conditions, three planes can take off and land at the same time.

This roundabout works closely with the Nascar racing track or the roulette wheel at the casinos, Hesselink said. If the rotation is completely flat, the centrifugal force will be too large, causing the plane to dislodge from the runway. But if the runway is slightly tilted (sloping in), it will keep the aircraft strong enough to speed up and take off.

To see how feasible this design is, Hesselink and his team brought their research data to Charles de Gaulle airport in France with four runways. There they used a computer emulator to prove that the runway could also be loaded with take-off and landing aircraft like Charles de Gaulle airport. This design is also more effective in terms of runway space saving: even though the circumference of the round runway is 3 times the perimeter of a normal straight runway, it can allow up to 4 distilled aircraft. and landing. And because the aircraft no longer had to deal with the cross-wind, it would not waste any useless fuel as before.

Currently, the Endless Runway is just a concept that has been researched and data has only been tested on the computer's simulated runway. But Hesselink desires to test this runway in fact, first of all try with a racing track with a remote control plane. However, in such a dense infrastructure, the construction of a large airport will face many difficulties, not to mention the cost of building an airport just for testing.

Even so, we can imagine how beautiful the airports when viewed from above. ' Aesthetically, it will be a beautiful airport ,' Hesselink said. ' Looks much more beautiful than modern airports, I am humble.'