Morphing Plane Wings for Efficient Flights 202
Roland Piquepaille writes "Airplanes, whether manned or unmanned, need to travel at various speeds. For example, a surveillance plane needs to fly fast to reach its destination point. Then, it needs to reduce its speed to achieve its surveillance mission. But with its fixed wings, it doesn't offer the same level of efficiency during these two phases. That's why Penn State engineers have devised airplane wings that change shape like a bird and have scales like a fish. Right now, the team has only built a tabletop model. So it will be a long time before you catch a plane and watch the wings disappear by looking through the window. This overview contains more details and references, including a couple of images describing the work done so far."
The future (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd want them to work on the technology a bit before this happened though. Wouldn't want the plane suddenly falling apart way up in the sky.
GERONIMO!!!!
Re:The future (Score:2, Funny)
I want a bug/plane combination that can combine with other bug/plane combinations to form a giant velociraptor, with rockets that shoot and flashing eyes.
Re:The future (Score:2)
Err. If they did that, wouldn't both the bus mode and the flight mode really really suffer from it? The reason why this particular project can work is that we're not talking a huge transformation here. Just an expansion of wing length.
Re:The future (Score:2, Funny)
Check out the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check out the article... (Score:3, Informative)
The Wright Brothers called this Wing-Warping [nasa.gov].
In 1901.
Re:Check out the article... (Score:5, Funny)
damn java really is portable.
Re:Check out the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check out the article... (Score:2)
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:5, Informative)
Even if this isn't exactly the same application as the Wright's Wing Warping, the point of both is to change the aerodynamics of the wing by changing its geometery. This is just the latest in a long line of attempts. In the 1980's NASA came up with the scissors wing to address exactly this problem -- swept wing for the fast transit to the station point, straight wing for loitering on station. In the 1990's Boeing won a contract to re-wing a bunch of Navy jets with flexible composite wings -- with no slats, flaps, or ailerons.
Re: MOD MODDERS SIDEWAYS (Score:2)
The Wright Borthers patents on warping wing design, and all the me-too patents that followed it, have finally expired. These guys are just trying to avoid all the modern aviation patents by going back to expired patent technology.
It's all about saving money on patent licenses, don' 'cha know.
Re:Check out the article... (Score:5, Informative)
rj
Gadget Wings! (Score:4, Funny)
So it will be a long time (Score:5, Funny)
Not if you fly USAir!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
More than meets the eye (Score:5, Funny)
You know...
...that thing had better be sporting a Decepticon insignia.
Re:More than meets the eye (Score:4, Insightful)
Never fear! The USAF is here, and apparently they're Transformers fans.
Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:5, Interesting)
The maintenance up-time required for a flexing wing will probably be ridiculous, unless it contains self-repairing abilities.
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
There's lots of bendy stuff that outlasts anything organic in the world.
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:3, Informative)
organic? check
fatigue resistant? check
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:3, Informative)
That may very well be why they mention the "fish scale" skin, so that it can effectively change the profile of the wing without requiring individual pieces parts to change shape... the unchanging scales may just slide over/under each other to arrange themselves into a different physical arrangement.
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:2)
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
aircraft wings already flex a bit (Score:5, Informative)
Modern aluminum alloys with a carbon fiber/resin infrastructure could handle these well known aeroelastic stresses. One shouldn't just lay a blanket of assumption saying that any non-natural bending material that retains strength is impossible, though handling the problems of aeroelasticity remains a very active research area.
Re:aircraft wings already flex a bit (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to see some crazy stuff look around for wing flutter. This is where the wing hits a natural frequency and crazy stuff starts to happen. One of my proffessors use to do research in this area with NASA and has some crazy stories.
Re:aircraft wings already flex a bit (Score:5, Informative)
Probably the best aircraft to see this on is the B52. This has outrigger wheels on the wings to keep the wingtips from striking the ground. These being the first wheels to leave the ground on takeoff.
Flex "a bit"? (Score:2)
We're probably just using different definitions for the same word, but wings flex more than "a bit," at least in my way of thinking.
This link [dg-flugzeugbau.de] from our German friends has some interesting pics on destructive testing. Even small wings can bend several feet and still function. Airliner size wings flex many feet, and can scare the piss out of people that aren't prepared for it.
Sometimes the discovery channel will air video of a test-to-destruction done on a wing. It's truly scary.
I think these people maybe
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:2, Insightful)
If the stress put on a ferrous material is much smaller than the amount of stress that part can handle, then after a certain large number of cycles without failure you could pretty much consider the part unbreakable. For example, this is why it would be better to pick up a good set of seasoned connecting rods rather than a brand new set (assuming, of course, that someone hasn't abused the used conn rods).
Non-ferrous materials don't have this property. And of course, memory metal (usually nitinol
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:2)
At one time BMW was building F1 racing car engines using old engine blocks. Because of this rule-of-th
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:4, Interesting)
That really depends. There are a lot of springs that last a long time and require little upkeep.
I've never had my auto springs give out on me, and I usually drive 150k+ mile cars.
Re:Closer to a biological system, but not quite (Score:4, Informative)
most Al alloys have no endurance limit and thus will always eventually (maybe in 1 min or 10000 years) fail by fatigue if they do not fail some other way first
2 in a row (Score:3, Informative)
English, Do you speak it (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet Zeus, what a revelation.
I also did not realize that it would ever be possible to make wings disappear by looking through a window.
Where's my flying car?
Re:English, Do you speak it (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah right, I mean all these devices that can only travel at one speed are just, well impractical, how would you ever get aboard one of them?
Re:English, Do you speak it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:English, Do you speak it (Score:2)
Re:English, Do you speak it (Score:3, Funny)
Only cos I helped you take the wheels off!
Re:English, Do you speak it (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, dude, I was looking at it through a window and...
Not all that new (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. F-14 and F-111, European Tornado, and a bunch of Russian Tupolev and Sukhoi models have had variable-geometry wings for decades. This is hardly a new concept -- just snazzier ways of doing it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Idea is older than you think... (Score:4, Interesting)
I seem to recall that one of the Wright brothers observed that birds seem to turn by twisting their wings, and actually built the Wright Flyer with cables that twisted the wings in order to control it.
Patents-whores need not look! (Score:2)
Re:Patents-whores need not look! (Score:2)
It's been a REALLY long time since I've seen the movie, but I thought the ship was morphing into more of a tear shape for atmospheric flight. Seems logical to me, anyway, I read somewhere that the tear shape was aerodynamically the best shape for
New version of old concept (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not just changing the sweep as in a normal -111, -14, B-1, Mig-27 or Blackjack, but rather the shape of the wing changes as needed.
There's something.... on... the .... wing (Score:5, Funny)
huh? (Score:2, Offtopic)
What sort of voodu does one need to have to have to make things disappear just by looking at them? I hope no terrorists are on these flights and have notions of looking out the window. Soon the FAA will screen all passengers for passengers attempting to smuggle "eyes" onto the airplane.
Those blind people have it good! Their planes always have lift.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Congradulations! I hereby award you, Leroy7677, with the award for the post with the least amount of insightfullness. Many spend time thinking about a post, but it takes a true hero to post flamebait of this magnitude. Unfortunately, this distinction does not come with any cash reward, though expect someone who agrees with you to mod you up, even though it will be clear they do not understand the issue either! We also would have accepted "you are an idiot" or "You are a fool". For the Anti-insightful king of posting, this bud is for you.
Weight/complexity penalty? (Score:5, Insightful)
A swing-wing VG aircraft is inevitably heavier than a non-swing-wing aircraft. Gains from the more efficient aerodynamic shape are eaten up by having to support a greater weight of wing structure, which has bad effects on things like power-to-weight ratio and wing loading. On top of that, the greater mechanical complexity leads to a higher maintenance load, usually expressed in Maintenance Man-Hours per Flight Hour (MMHFH).
This project looks like much of the same. Modern aircraft wings are monocoque, and have very little internal structure (although the space may be filled by other things like fuel tankage). These wings would require a lot of heavy internal structure to accomplish the effect, thus losing the benefits of the more efficient airfoil. Plus, the MMHFH ratio must be pretty awful with hundreds of little actuators.
On top of that, what are the failure modes? What happens if one of those actuators fails in the middle of a shift? Does the wing rip itself apart?
Move along folks, nothing to see here.
--Paul
Re:Weight/complexity penalty? (Score:4, Informative)
They'd also make a much poorer fuel tank...
On top of that, what are the failure modes? What happens if one of those actuators fails in the middle of a shift? Does the wing rip itself apart?
Even if the wing stays in one piece you have the problem of the two wings producing differing amounts of lift and drag. If the roll and yaw control surfaces can't cope with this then the plane is likely to fall out of the sky. (Probably in bits since the resulting areodymanic forces will tear it apart.)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
oldest trick in the book (Score:3, Informative)
as for the f-14 and variable geometry wings, it's not quite the same. moving the wings back and forth help with things like shock waves and control fading/reversal at high speeds.
we use the math now to determine if the wings of an airplane will rip off without warning, a phenomenon called "divergence". as for the complicated maintence issue, every plane goes through this, although they don't actively change their wings. if you watch the wings the next time you fly somewhere, you'll see they bounce up and down. the math is done during construction and testing to make sure that the airplane can deform as it needs to and still stay in the air.
who says college doesn't teach you anything? now if i could just pass the final in this class on monday...
Re:oldest trick in the book (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oldest trick in the book (Score:3, Informative)
"Morphing HECS wing: showing the unmorphed and morphiged[sic] configurations. The wing tips are bent downwards to provide yaw control.(Courtsey: NASA Langley)"
the wings bend up and down. not in a sweeping motion. if you think about what they are doing, it makes sense. the "scales" slide over one another. although i admit the article says one thing, and demonstrates something else. if they are doing a variable aspect ratio (the slim/long to wide/short wings) then they need to rev
Storing fuel in the wings? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I would guess these wings aren't going to be very strong. I don't think they will safely be able to transmit the lift that they generate along their length to the body of the aircraft.
Might work for small UAVs though, since they're smaller, and lighter.
Re:Storing fuel in the wings? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Storing fuel in the wings? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this also done for combat aircraft? If so, I wonder if anyone else has thought of reinforcing these with shear-thickening fluid (STF) [slashdot.org]. This could increase battle-damage survivability to a great extent! At least, it would the protect the fuel tanks from shrapnel hits.
Re:Storing fuel in the wings? (Score:2)
Re:Storing fuel in the wings? (Score:2)
Re:Storing fuel in the wings? (Score:2)
Such tanks go by the name of "bladders", rather unimaginativly.
Shades of Macross Plus (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Shades of Macross Plus (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that new of an idea (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing Special (Score:2, Interesting)
Anime predicting the future (Score:3, Interesting)
If anybody has seen Macross Plus, they know the YF-21 [steelfalcon.com] had wings like this.
They're already working on powered body armor and brain controlled computers, what other tech from anime will we see soon.
Re:Anime predicting the future (Score:3, Funny)
Dear God, don't let it be anything involving tentacles and/or school girls.
Changing wing properties is nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
The real question is whether the new scheme can be made sufficiently reliable/low cost to use in production aircraft.
Of course I didn't RTFM - that would be cheating!
Pat Beatty (Score:5, Interesting)
The technology of the day was far less sophisticated than today, but it's an interesting bit of aeronautical history nonetheless.
Although I met Pat Beatty once or twice during the early 80s, I was too young to have seen his variable-geometry and variable-span creations fly, first hand. Most of what I know about them I heard from the old-timers in my flying club, who had been active in gliding competition during the 60s.
Sadly, there seems to be very little surviving literature available on the Beatty and Beatty-Johl designs. Google turns up a few grainy photographs, and articles in ancient editions of Soaring Magazine and Krautkorant (Cape Gliding Club Newsletter), but that's about it.
Pat's wife Beatty Rowell also made significant contributions to aviation, both as a pilot and meteorologist, and wrote the book "Just for the Love of Flying". Time for a re-read, I think.
Re:Pat Beatty (Score:2)
Pat isn't too unusual a name for a man. It's short for Patrick. (Go to Ireland, some time).
Oops, my typo! Her name was Betty, not Beatty.
Thanks god she didn't take his surname!
She did take his surname. I wrote her name as "Betty Rowell" in the posting, to keep it amazon.com-friendly, in case anyone was interested in her book. We knew her as "Betty Beatty", but she wrote under the name "Betty Rowell
Looks like tensegrity (Score:3, Insightful)
No ailerons, no getting home. Rudder and elevators won't steer a plane.
Re:Looks like tensegrity (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on the aircraft. Remember a crew managed to sucessfully crash land a DC10 with no control surfaces an
Presto, Change-o! (Score:2, Funny)
It's about time Mystique [marvel.com] found some honest work.
This idea was there in tintin long back (Score:2, Interesting)
A boon to ornithopterists? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure I'd want to fly in a plane with flapping wings, but morphing surfaces might be a boost to these guys [ornithopter.net], who are working on ornithopters (and must be avid Frank Herbert fans). The video of their 1/4 proof of concept in flight is pretty interesting.
Changing wing shapes, eh? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dont some (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that the F-14 moves the physical wings to be more efficient. The wings in this article actualy change shape. i guess a good thing to compare it to is the liquid metal guy from T2. He could change his bodies shape on demand. That's what this is. I guess they finally figured out how to keep it stable with the immense pressures, forces, and speeds wings are subjected to.
Re:Dont some (Score:2, Informative)
The wing is bendable for getting a better airflow and a certain lift-force at a certain airspeed. This is far more efficient than the flaps that are used today bacause it has far less turbulance. Lots of fuell can be saved.
And yup. You can fold the wings of an F14 closer to the airplane's body for less resistance. Ofcourse this is 'physical', just like the bending.
Re:Dont some (Score:3, Informative)
It really has nothing to do with it, I was just trying to give a sense of what they are talking about. As in, the material changes shape, instead of orientation like on the F-14, or other aircraft that change their wing poition.
Re:Swing wings! (Score:5, Informative)
My guess is that this "next greatest thing" isn't the answer either, but almost anything is better than a swing wing.
My god! (Score:4, Funny)
You is the man! We at slashdot are eagerly awaiting more stupifyingly news of the obvious!
Re:My god! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Swing wings! (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if Slashdotters ever read the fucking article.
They're talking about the use of memory alloys for a flexible wing which, in tandem with the segmented skin, will allow the wings to be deformed in-flight to adjust its aerodynamic properties. Think of it like having a wing with hundreds or thousands of flaps which could be raised or lowered in sections to change the profile of the wing to fit any situation.
Oh, remind me: where'd you study aeronautics?
PREDICTED!! (Score:4, Funny)
Kind of:
From Bruce Sterling's short story Deep Eddy:
Then later:
Re:Swing wings! (Score:2)
Re:Swing wings! (Score:5, Informative)
umm...no (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Concorde had done it decades ago (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Boeing or Airbus could offer an aircraft that could take off out of Denver on a hot day with the same payload capabilities as flying out of SFO on a cold day, they would have alot of buyers.
Once they're at cruising altitude you could change your wing to cruise settings for that maximum distance based on total weight and alter that durring the flight to minimize induced drag.
Re:Hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tomcats (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tomcats (Score:2, Informative)
One of the technologies swept wings are being replaced with is thrust vectoring, which allows the plane to change the direction of the engine exaust, this allows a plane with a good pilot/computer to have extreme manuverability compared to normal aircraft.
The F-22 has up/down thrust vectoring, the X-31 has full directional controls, as well as the Su-35(or 37, not sure). One trick ive seen the Su do is to vector the thrust upwards as far as it will go, while pulli
Re:OT: Who is Roland Piquepaille? (Score:3, Informative)
Towards Silent Supersonic Planes [slashdot.org]
Satellites Show That Earth Has a Fever [slashdot.org]
This Robot Collects Fingerprints [slashdot.org]
From the Higgs Boson Particle to Leadbelly [slashdot.org]
Or just view them all [slashdot.org].
Some guy with a blog. Here's some real info. (Score:3, Informative)
For something intelligent on this topic, see this DARPA/Boeing presentation. [darpa.mil] DARPA has a number of "smart airfoil" [darpa.mil] projects. They've tried shape memory alloys. They've tried ferroelectric fluids. They've tried piezoelectric materials. It looks like the first flight test will be a piezoelectric system on the rotor blades of an MD-900 helicopter.
It's not yet clear that it's worth the tr
Re:OT: Who is Roland Piquepaille? (Score:2)
Ob on topic: This wing morphing thing is hardly new. The idea has been around forever. In fact, if you go back to the original Wright Flyer you'll find that
Re:The more things change... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:from the dept. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is it a MIGHTY morphing wing? (Score:2)
Yep, you're absolutely right. You really should have made a TMNT or Inspector Gadget joke here. We didn't watch Power Rangers. Well I did, but it was the only thing on in the morning.
Re:Look at the Wright brothers first airplane (Score:2)
Being the proud(??) owner of some 47 of these adaptive wing things with highly adaptive wings for various flight conditions from hover to forward flight at full speed etc I have an opinion on this issue that might just be of value. (I own 47 chickens) Frankly if these guys want to adapt feathers why don't they try the first rather silly thought and COPY feathers?
While chickens suffer from a very heavy body largely due to the genetic minipulation by various means of human beings attempting to mess up their
Re:Look at the Wright brothers first airplane (Score:2)
Chickens "pluck" themselves annually... its called a molt. They just cannot use their feathers for a while...
As to plucking chickens for meat purposes boiling hot water works great. Takes a few second and the rest is pretty much grabbing and pulling. (a bit tedious) Done this once or twice!