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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: 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.