Why do air planes have that little hole at the bottom of the window..(Interesting Engineering and Logical reason behind the Airplane window hole - Explained the huge amount of innovation in a very short amount of time)
Every aeroplane window seems to have one tiny hole. I can only guess that it has something to do with pressure, but I'm clueless. What is the logical reason behind the small hole?
There are three parts in most airline windows.
First is the inner layer which is the dust or scratch cover. It keeps people from poking scratching the real window, which, depending on the airplane, is several layers of different materials, including but not limited to tempered glass, plexiglass, vinyl, acrylic. Behind that are two other panes that make up the main part of the window. They're two, half-inch thick pieces of plexiglass and they're separated by about a half an inch of air.
The middle pane has that hole. It's sometimes called the breather hole.
There are two purposes for the window whole.
1. The hole let's warm air in between the 2 panes keeping the outer window from getting frosted or fogged up from the really cool air outside.
2. when the plane ascends and descends the air pressure on the window changes. That little breather hole keeps the pressure inside those two panes the same so they don't implode or explode. So, it's basically a failsafe pane that takes no load until primary failure, hence the equalization hole.
That's what the hole is for!
Comments:
matthewr87: In the early days of commercial aviation (De Havilland Comet), airplane windows used to be square. The pressure changes associated with take off and landing cycles concentrated an inordinate amount of stress on the corner points of the square, eventually leading to failure. People died for the circular windows we have now.
Reply: One of my instructors told me that every rule and innovation in aviation was created with blood. Every time something goes wrong, they investigate it and find a way to not let it happen again. Thats why airplanes are so safe today.
My grandfathers legacy, he used to go investigate airplane crashes, examine what was left of the bodies and then suggest changes. There was a plane crash in the 1960s in Denver, lots of people died in the rear but the first class cabin exit was clear. He found that the curtain was closed during landing, it caught fire and the people in the back couldn't see that the exit was opened and they died thinking they were trapped. Now, the curtain has to be open during take off/landings due to my grandfathers work. I got in trouble in grade school for taking some of his airplane pathology books to school for show and tell, the were full of pictures of bodies and body pieces.
Burton1922: I pulled up a Guardian article I read on this exact thing last year. Pretty cool idea.
Quote from the article "UK developers are working on removing windows in planes to save weight and fuel, replacing them with smartscreen panels broadcasting the view."
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