Scientists Invents Quiet Airplane Toilet To Control Children’s Fears Of Loud Flush

Scientists Invents Quiet Airplane Toilet To Control Children’s Fears Of Loud Flush

Researchers from Brigham Young University hope the new quite toilets will reduce children’s fears of going to the toilet mid-flight

It’s something that many children fear, but airplane toilets could soon be much less intimidating to youngsters.

Scientists from Brigham Young University have invented a new quite plane toilet that’s half as loud as current toilets.

”So, we’ve used good physics to solve the problem.”

While you might think that developing a quieter toilet would be fairly simply, it was actually a complex challenge.

When a plane is in the air, it pulls waste through the toilet at nearly half the speed of sound, generating significant noise.

Scott Sommerfeldt, co-author of the study, said: “Airline companies have always had standards for the toilet noise, but they’ve never met those and there has never been much pressure to do so.

“Now with the reduced cabin sound levels, the sound of the toilet flushing is more noticeable and customers are pushing back.”

The researchers focused on three stages during the flush cycle – the initial noise created as the flush valve opens, an intermediate noise as the valve is fully opened, and the final noise as the valve closes.

To reduce the noise, the researchers added additional piping to increase the distance between the toilet bowl and flush valve, and moved the pipe attachment at the bowl to a more gradual bend, rather thant he current 90-degree angle.

During testing, these changes halved the amount of noise compared to standard airplane toilets.

Best of all, the new pipes can easily be added to existing toilets, meaning they wouldn’t be difficult or expensive to implement.

It remains unclear how or when the team plans to approach airlines about the new toilet technology.

Source: UK Mirror