What is the merit of eliminating the windows of the aircraft and making the entire wall surface inside the display display?

One of the pleasures of airplane flights is often "scenery that can be seen from the window", and there are times when you look at the scenery far below from the sky and you can see the aurora depending on the route of the flight " I definitely want to sit at the window. " In the UK research and development institution, instead of removing the windows themselves from the airplane, it is possible to display the images outside the machine on the wall inside the fuselage where passengers sit and develop environment-friendly "wall display" technology It is done.

The windowless plane set for take-off in a decade | Business | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/26/innovations-windowless-plane?CMP=twt_gu

We are developing this technology based in Northeastern United KingdomThe Center for Process Innovation(CPI). In the movie that the institute creates, you can see the image image at the completion.

Aerospace Windowless Aircraft - The Future Inspired by CPI


This is an image image of the inside of a cabinet on which a wall display is used. It feels as if it was just like a glass, a feeling of opening which was not considered in the past. It is interesting that the image is also displayed on some sheets.


What I can see is not the actual sight but the picture taken by the camera outside the camera. Therefore, it is also possible to display additional information by adding processing.


You may also be able to order drinks etc. by touching the screen.


It can also be used as a monitor screen for in-flight entertainment equipment.


Is Tokyo Tower what you see over there? In fact it seems that it will be necessary to clear the problems such as distance and angle with the screen, but it seems that the scenery which will not be compared with the conventional one will spread.


In this way, although it is a display form of the whole wall that seems to bring a lot of merit to in-flight entertainment etc., what this technology is aiming for is "lightening of the airframe". In the case of an aircraft, if the weight of the aircraft is reduced by 1 percent, the consumption of fuel is reduced by 0.75 percent, so for aircraft that consume a lot of fuel on a single flight, weight reduction of the aircraft is an eternal theme It is.

The reason why you can reduce the weight of the aircraft by eliminating windows is to be able to omit reinforcement of the aircraft. Aircraft are generally made of lightweight aluminum alloy, etc. A plate of about 4 mm in thickness is used for a 6 m wide aircraft. When this is reduced to the same size as 350 ml aluminum can, its thickness is very thin, 0.05 mm. In a nutshell, it is like making aluminum cans with aluminum foil, but in order to maintain sufficient strength even in this state, the framework for reinforcement is stretched inside the outer plate of the aircraft.

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However, if you drill a large hole to attach the window to the reinforced fuselage, the strength will drop and you will need to reinforce with extra material to make up for it.

It is likely that it will be used to reduce the weight of the "waste" so to speak, the CPIPrinted electronicsTechnology. It is a technology that creates products with high degree of freedom by forming electronic circuits and equipment by printing, and by using this technology to change the wall itself to a display, it is possible to reduce the weight of the airframe and the comfort of passengers It will be realized at the same time.

Wall display does not require auxiliary devices such as backlightOrganic ELIs expected to be used, this technology is often used in smartphones and others. In order to realize this, technology for printing on curved surfaces is required, and the high technical power of CPI is required.

According to CPI, we estimate about 10 years to realize a wall display that can achieve both environmental performance and comfort.