Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
MIT and NASA engineers demonstrate a new kind of airplane wing
A team of engineers has built and tested a radically new kind of airplane wing, assembled from hundreds of tiny identical pieces. The wing can change shape to control the plane's flight, and could provide a significant boost in aircraft production, flight, and maintenance efficiency, the researchers say.
The new approach to wing construction could afford greater flexibility in the design and manufacturing of future aircraft. The new wing design was tested in a NASA wind tunnel and is described today in a paper in the journal Smart Materials and Structures, co-authored by research engineer Nicholas Cramer at NASA Ames in California; MIT alumnus Kenneth Cheung SM '07 Ph.D. '12, now at NASA Ames; Benjamin Jenett, a graduate student in MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; and eight others.
Instead of requiring separate movable surfaces such as ailerons to control the roll and pitch of the plane, as conventional wings do, the new assembly system makes it possible to deform the whole wing, or parts of it, by incorporating a mix of stiff and flexible components in its structure. The tiny subassemblies, which are bolted together to form an open, lightweight lattice framework, are then covered with a thin layer of similar polymer material as the framework.
The result is a wing that is much lighter, and thus much more energy efficient, than those with conventional designs, whether made from metal or composites, the researchers say. Because the structure, comprising thousands of tiny triangles of matchstick-like struts, is composed mostly of empty space, it forms a mechanical "metamaterial" that combines the structural stiffness of a rubber-like polymer and the extreme lightness and low density of an aerogel.
Jenett explains that for each of the phases of a flight—takeoff and landing, cruising, maneuvering and so on—each has its own, different set of optimal wing parameters, so a conventional wing is necessarily a compromise that is not optimized for any of these, and therefore sacrifices efficiency. A wing that is constantly deformable could provide a much better approximation of the best configuration for each stage.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 08 2019, @12:50PM (4 children)
What's the impact to fuel storage capacity?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by messymerry on Monday April 08 2019, @12:54PM (1 child)
Exactly: I was going to say: Were ya gonna put the gas dumbass???
There's sometimes a internal tank amidships, butt as far as I know most of the gas is in the wings...
;-D
Only fools equate a PhD with a Swiss Army Knife...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 08 2019, @04:59PM
For high dynamics flight, quick rolls, etc. it's nice to keep the fuel near the center of mass, but for commercial carriers the opposite applies. Maybe the new wings will have wingtip tanks?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @05:49PM
This is just a lab model the researchers prototypes with 3D printer and put together by hand, wiring included, to have something to run in the wind tunnel and satisfy the grant and publication requirements. For actual production the pieces will be a fraction of the size which will render fuel capacity the same as regular commercial jet wings or even better.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @10:39AM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @02:08PM (5 children)
OK, a quick history lesson is in order. The Wright brothers used wing warping to successfully control the first fixed-wing powered aircraft in 1904. Ailerons were used in powered flight later, perhaps most famously used by Curtiss to avoid infringing on the Wright's patents.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday April 08 2019, @03:09PM
*Just like those white boys to exploit something like that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BenFenner on Monday April 08 2019, @04:48PM
Even more history:
The French were using wing warping well before the Wright brothers because it was more stable. There were plenty of other things that made flight more stable that the Wright brother purposefully avoided (like placing the thrust in the wrong place, along with the elevators). You'll notice the Wright flier has everything wrong. This was on purpose. The Wright brother figured if they could make a naturally unstable craft fly-able, then they'd be on to something. The French were working with more stable designs but just didn't crack the control technique in time. The Wright brothers had to figure out how to control pitch, yaw, elevation, and roll because nothing about the plane design provided any help.
More importantly though, the summary claims that "conventional wings" "require separate movable surfaces". Tell that to the birds/bats who have the true conventional wings.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Monday April 08 2019, @05:33PM (1 child)
And sailors were doing the same to navigate their ships for hundreds of years prior.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday April 08 2019, @09:17PM
I was about to say the same thing. Basically a sail is a wing where the shape is controlled with the sheets and other lines.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:49AM
Is it just me or does this artist's concept [internapcdn.net] look rather similar, modulo the winglets, to some versions of the Arado Ar E555 [luft46.com] Amerika Bomber from 1942?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday April 08 2019, @04:29PM (3 children)
> significant boost in aircraft production, flight, and maintenance efficiency
It's a just a critical flight element which will be controlled by complex software ... let's ask Boeing about that.
> which are bolted together to form an open, lightweight lattice framework, are then covered with a thin layer of similar polymer material as the framework.
I've seen wings warp up and down in shitty weather. I'll stay on the plane which the Al or Composite wings until this newfangled idea get a few million flight-hours from the North's winter to the Caribbean's humidity and back under the careful supervision of Joe the Hammer maintenance guy.
How many of those individual elements can fail before things escalate into asymmetric flight profile goodness ?
Don't misunderstand me. I welcome improvements in wing design which will help to pad executive bonuses.
But I always take "researchers" marketing with a giant grain of salt.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday April 08 2019, @09:24PM
Agree...way too many moving parts. We used to have a firm design principle called KISS.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:35AM
There isn't any software controlling the wing shape. The article says the wings are designed so that different stresses on the structure cause the wing to deform to the most advantageous airfoil for that phase of flight. It's entirely passive, there aren't even any motors.
The article also says this would be applicable to things like turbine blades, which would negate the problems with shipping those bigass propellors around.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:12AM
What I would be more concerned is about aero-elasticity effects. I once was fascinated by inflatable wings but invariably they had very funny flutter, after some speeds or when coupling the speed with a given flight surface deformation. Also moving parts give rise to funny dynamics appearing out of nowhere. It looks cool, but definitely not a new concept. I hope they release the research as there are a lot of aeronautics students who would build them and put them to tests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:04AM
Tetrahedral arrangements of flying surfaces are not new:
- https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/alexander-graham-bells-tetrahedral-kites-1903-9/ [publicdomainreview.org]
- https://books.google.com/books?id=TAUVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA219 [google.com]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahedral_kite [wikipedia.org]
What's new is the flexibility of the elements, which promises additional control over aeronautical characteristics.
It's tempting to lay all of this at the feet of Buckminster Fuller but that article from the National Geographic, cited above, was probably lying on young Bucky's parents' coffee table, and he probably read it, and it probably warped his helpless little mind for the rest of his life into seeing everything as triangles.
Smaller cells combined with a larger array result in overall greater stability. Buckminster Fuller described this phenomenon as "vector equilibrium", I think.
Floating cities are all very interesting but I think flying cities are where it's at. Buckminster Fuller calculated that at a certain scale even reinforced concrete spheres would become buoyant, with an interior increase in temperature of just a few degrees. How much easier it would be to achieve buoyancy, and stability, and maneuverability, if one's city was a vast, kite-shaped structure? Or both?
Food for thought.
~childo