Airspace closures mandate more volcanic ash research
The air transport industry was caught off guard in April when huge plumes of ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano effectively shut down flying in Eu
The air transport industry was caught off guard in April when huge plumes of ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano effectively shut down flying in Europe for a week, stranding thousands of passengers and draining at least $1 billion from air carriers. Now, several months later the fact that engineers are still having a hard time understanding precisely how volcanic ash damages an aircraft and its engines lends weight to the view that the industry was woefully ill-prepared for this problem.
The general principles are well known–particles cause abrasion everywhere and can create layers of sediment on engine blades, not forgetting corrosion. But understanding the physics of a phenomenon calls for complex equations and number-crunching.
