A Feasibility Study of the Use of Radiant Energy for Fog Dispersal.
Abstract
As part of a broad effort by the Air Force to evaluate various methods of dissipating warm fogs over airport runways, a feasibility study has been made of the possible use of radiant energy to dissipate fog. The source of microwave power was considered either ground-based or airborne. For the ground-based case, the microwave beam was taken as parallel to the ground and along the runway, providing a direct source of microwave power for heating the fog. For the airborne case, the beam was taken as perpendicular to the ground, the heating of the ground by the microwave beam providing a source of infrared power for dissipating the fog. The study showed that, for either case, very large power densities, well above the personnal safety limit of 100 W/sq m used in the U.S. would be required to dissipate the fog in a time of about 10 min. If the power density is taken as 100 W/sq m, a very long time, that is, many hours, would be required to dissipate the fog. In addition, because of the high cost of electrical energy, the large amount of energy required to dissipate a typical airport fog (about 3 x 10 to the 11th power J) makes the scheme prohibitively expensive. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 06, 1978
- Accession Number
- ADA063143
Entities
People
- Milton M. Klein
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory