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Science Technology

NASA Smartmorphing Materials and Structures 45

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-materials dept.
Bomber007 writes "As taken from here: "As part of the Morphing Project, scientists are developing smart wing materials that can bend on command, closely imitating a bird's wings during flight, and piezoelectric sensors that allow an aircraft to "feel" the motion of its wings, just like birds do, so it can adjust to different conditions. Further research might see personal aircraft with self-healing materials, NASA says. And air cars that hover, fly backwards and upside down, just like bugs can. NASA being NASA, many of the other potential applications are military: there's a vision for fighter bombers that could instantly morph into agile, high speed jets and also talk of fleets of attack aircraft without pilots." More information can also be found at the NASA site here." Voltron. That's my comment.
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NASA Smartmorphing Materials and Structures More

NASA Smartmorphing Materials and Structures

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  • NASA's Ames Research Center is in Moffett Field, CA which borders Mountain View, CA.
  • Though I don't remember the details, I'm reminded of the RoboTuna project (MIT?). We're really inefficient with underwater propulsion, compared to fish. IIRC, our propellers are as efficient as they're going to get. To be more efficient, some people have tried to model fish propulsion.

    However, fish are much more nimble than our cable-driven robots, and are better able to adapt their stroke to vortices produced by their tail fins. It seems like a morphing, feeling material would make artificial fish propulsion much easier.

    Now, imagine a submarine, enclosed inside a giant fish-shaped, flopping hull...

    -Paul Komarek
  • Ornithopters. As in Dune and dozens of other sci-fi classics.

  • Re:Not for 20 years (Score:5)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Sunday May 06, 2001 @12:56PM (#242538) Homepage
    technology is going to change so much in the next 20 years that we can't begin to imagine what we will and won't be able to do

    Yeah, I mean look at the huge changes in aircraft technology between 1980 and 2000!

    Back then, we all flew in things called "jet airplanes", some of which were made by outdated companies with names like "Boeing" and "McDonnell-Douglas". Way back then, models such as the exotic "747", "737" and "DC-10" were routinely used for passenger transport, although they had no idea how primitive such technology would look to their descendants.

    Fortunately we can look back on their technological hubris and know that here, in the far future, we have developed much safer, cleaner, more efficient, and faster craft that put such archaeological curiosities to shame...

    ---------------------------------------------
  • FYI: The Ames Research Center is probably in Ames, IA, not in Mountain View, CA.
  • try building one yourself [linuxtoday.com] then.

  • Hmm... (Score:2)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 )
    While the methods/ideas NASA is discussing might be different, the idea of dynamically bending a wing in flight is nothing new. Aside from the Wright brothers original wing warping systems to effect control (prior to the idea of control "surfaces"), many times dynamic bending has been used to cut down resonant occillation in the wing structure of certain larger planes (like the Starlifter). These systems use hydraulics and cable systems, along with computer controls, to reduce the occillation of the wings while in flight, where the wings would "flap" up and down, producing large stresses on the wing...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • weren't we already supposed to have flying cars? They are the great pumpkin of the technological world. Give it up already; they aren't coming, Charlie Brown.

    Um, not to criticize too much, but did you watch the end of that movie?

    I swear, when the Great Pumpkin does come, he is so gonna damn your non-believin' ass to pedestrian Hell.

  • weren't we already supposed to have flying cars? They are the great pumpkin of the technological world. Give it up already; they aren't coming, Charlie Brown.

  • Not for 20 years (Score:3)

    by BierGuzzl ( 92635 ) on Sunday May 06, 2001 @10:07AM (#242544)
    According to the first article, this won't be used in "cutting edge" aircraft design for another 20 years yet. If you've learned to spot vapourware, you should be able to spot this -- technology is going to change so much in the next 20 years that we can't begin to imagine what we will and won't be able to do. Musings of morphing planes are just that, they belong in comic books and science fantasy books.

  • Actually, Macross Plus was an OVA series, then became a video.

    Wildly OT but who cares. Actually, OVA [everything2.com] (Original Video Animation) means that it was released first on video.

  • Neat Idea (Score:3)

    by Life Blood ( 100124 ) on Sunday May 06, 2001 @02:51PM (#242546) Homepage

    Basically what these guys seem to be doing is using a part of the stiffness matrix most people avoid to create aerodynamic tailoring. Basically the stiffness matrix of every structure has components which not only control bending and stretching, but also couple the two. So if you pull on a structure with a non-zero B portion of the stiffness matrix, it bends. If you twist it, it stretches. Normally people do their damnedest to avoid this (they make sure the B terms are zero) as it makes the structure act really weird, but if you use it you can create tailoring effects for different loads and behaviors. The biggest area I've heard of them using it was tailoring helicoptor rotors for rotational speed. Looks like someone wants to use it for aircraft wings.

    All this of course runs into the problem that for most structural materials you really can't change the shape that much since you are essentially deforming the structure. There are elastic limits to this sort of thing beyond which parts break. So unless you intend to build that plane out of rubber you might be in trouble.

  • more applications... (Score:4)

    by sleepykid ( 101292 ) on Sunday May 06, 2001 @09:51AM (#242547)
    There's also a vision for overweight computer nerds to morph into agile, high speed marathon runners.
  • Sorry, VIFFing = Vector in Forward Flight.
    This is what makes a Harrier (AV8) a nice machine to dogfight in - basically you can divert the thrust straight down so that the plane jumps upwards (relative to itself). This will both scrub some forward velocity and translate the plane making a pursuer likely to lose a lock and to overfly.
    Importantly there is only a very small chance of this being noticed by an opponent as the exhaust nozzles are both comparitively small and screened....
    ----
  • The trouble with variable geometry (swing wing) craft like the F14 is that the wing position is a major clue as to the energy state of the plane - if the wings are swept you know it can't make as sharp a turn as when the wings are forward. This is quite a help in dogfights. Other technologies such as viffing and active leading/trailing edges don't give visual clues to the hostile.
    Having said that something has gone wrong if you're dogfighting in a Tomcat anyway, that's what the Phoenix are for.
    ----
  • Except for Challenger we quite possibly would :P
  • this sounds more like ornithopers from dune, than it does voltron. trust me, i would know.
  • NASA has tons of interesting projects on the table that deal with Flight. The Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, has an ongoing effort with airports and the FAA.

    Many of their air flight related projects can be previewed at http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ne.html

    My personal favorite project is at http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/projects/neuro/ifc/acti ve.html
    ----------------------------------------- ---------
  • "Voltron. That's my comment."

    Are you deaf dumb AND blind? Go look up Robotech Valkyries, then you'll see what this technology is good for...

    Peace,
    Amit
    ICQ 77863057
  • Didn't the Challenger crew use that 30 acres behind the barn? Spread evenly over all 30 acres? ;-)

    Grab.

    PS. I know it's sick, but I couldn't help it...
  • I'm sick of seeing these words together. I don't normally rant on /. but: Wether in reference to servers (IBM's recent "server heal thyself" ad) , software, airplanes...it's all bullshit. I'm sure somewhere there's an example of this technology (other than gas tanks) but I haven't found it and I suspect that most of us will be 6' (2 odd meters for you 'outsiders' :) under before any of this stuff comes to pass.
  • Do you remember the old 80's(?) Disney movie "Flight of the Navigator"? Wouldn't this ship be a good example of what they are trying to do?
  • And we were supposed to have trips to the moon in 2000 according to pan am or someone..
    It'll be cool when I can have it. It's been theory (sci-fi) for quite some time.

    I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.

  • re: challenger..
    hmm.. good point. I watched it blow in person. Was a fairly loud boom.

    I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.

  • The only thing that comes to mind are the "self-repairing" tires that close after puncture. From waht I've read they actually work pretty well, sealing immediately around any puncture. It can't do this ad infinitum (despite the commerical), but it's a great application of self-repair.
  • Here [adequate.com] is the team forming Voltron.

  • Damn Atreides and there Ornithropters! My Sardaukar legions shall make quick work of them...
  • drones? there's a new concept. i wonder why no one has thought of this before... duh
  • Actually there are rocket driven torpedos that travel very fast. Russia has one called the Shkval (Squall) that is said to travel at around 230 miles an hour.

    They use a principle known as supercavitation and rockets.

    From this month's Scientific American [sciam.com]

    Of late, it has become increasingly apparent that the world's major naval powers are developing the means to build entire arsenals of innovative underwater weapons and armadas of undersea watercraft able to operate at unprecedented speeds. This high-velocity capability - a kind of "warp drive" for water - is based on the physical phenomenon of supercavitation. This fluid-mechanical effect occurs when bubbles of water vapor form in the lee of bodies submerged in fast-moving water flows. The trick is to surround an object or vessel with a renewable envelope of gas so that the liquid wets very little of the body's surface, thereby drastically reducing the viscous drag. Supercavitating systems could mean a quantum leap in naval warfare that is analogous in some ways to the move from prop planes to jets or even to rockets and missiles.

    So much for the "silent service".

    - tarkas

  • Imagine my surprise when I saw the other catagory dealing with this whole torpedo thing. Oops.
  • Didn't people report material like this at the roswell sight, and now the militry have the means to produce this material....
  • NASA had a project built around a F111
    during the late 70's / early 80's IIRC, called the MAW (Mission Adaptive Wing),
    which not only did variable geometry (sweep),
    but also had a (smoothly) variable camber airfoil
    for optimizing wing performance during different flight regimes.
    This would seem to be a natural progression of that concept.

    The F111 was outfitted (again, IIRC) with a standard
    starboard wing, and the port wing was the MAW.

    I don't know what ever became of the project,
    but last I saw the ship was sitting in pieces
    at Davis Monthan (storage) in Arizona.

  • Actually, Macross Plus was an OVA series, then became a video. Not only that, but it was based off of a real competition to choose a new fighter for the U.S. Airforce. Some Government folks are doing research into brainwave control of vehicles. TLC ran a special with all this in it, thought it was realy cool to see a movie I loved was based off of reality.
  • Oh, No, Liquid Metal is real! This is the beginning, the movie wasn't fiction, it's really happening. I don't wanna have a spike stuck through my head while drinking some milk!
  • Until I see Optimus Prime, I'm not impressed. Anyway, the F14, and others, have wing positions that correspond to the speed/style of flight... more swept back for fast and aggressive, etc.

    But damn it would be great for some Saudi pilot to see an F-22 morph into DeathScythe...
  • by the time these things are in production, we'll have supersonic submarines with gun turrets to shoot them down.

  • Re:Not for 20 years (Score:3)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Sunday May 06, 2001 @02:37PM (#242571)

    technology is going to change so much in the next 20 years that we can't begin to imagine what we will and won't be able to do

    This really depends on your perspective. Some neo-futurists (with whom I agree) have started taking a different look at technology, which is more in terms of a "punctuated equilibria" style of development. That is to say, development of technology occurs in tremendous bursts of advancement, rather than on a linear, continual basis. On the basis of older futurism, people would be prone to suggest, for example (as, indeed, they did), in the early-20th century, that radio technology would develop to such an extent that our society would be completely transformed by way of traditional commercial radio broadcasts. Of course, this wasn't the case at all. Other, completely unpredictable developments (e.g., data processing, digital telecommunications) usurped the technological limelight from radio, which stayed largely static. I see futurists treating computers, today, much as they treated radio in the past.

    Along these lines, I'd say that suggesting technology, especially with regard to something as incredibly specific as aircraft, is going to drastically change in the next 20 years is an unfounded suggestion. There may well be a lull in development, in which only previous technologies are advanced, and new ones are not invented (i.e., no punctuation in our equilibria).

    Even were our experience of past development to support the theory that future development will be exponential, that argument would be essentially baseless. The inductive historical approach which says that our experience of development in the future will match our experience of development in the past is just based on the fact that, in the past, our experience of comparing the past to the future has yielded a predicted future similar to the past. The argument is copmletely circular and, therefore, invalid (though adequately abstruse that most people miss the logical fallacy).

  • Although rubber bands could make really cool take off system from the Aircraft Carriers.
  • It only took NASA how long to learn from the things that have been flying longer then us? Finally, we now might be able to say we are better then the bird.

  • Where have I heard this before? (Score:3)

    by GearheadX ( 414240 ) on Sunday May 06, 2001 @10:07AM (#242574)
    • You know, this sounds not unlike the YF-21 from the Macross Plus straight-to-video series. All we need now is a direct-from-brain interface system and we'll be in business.

    Berk Watkins
  • Actually you got your facts mixed up. The plan is to morph overweight computer nerds into agile, high speed marathon sex machines.

    --
    "Fuck your mama."
  • Yes. But it turned out the material was simply mercury from a giant thermometer missile that was fired from White Sands. Due to a strong southwesterly wind it strayed off course and made it's way up to Roswell.

    --
    "Fuck your mama."
  • It's all about control systems, really. In order to use any of the tricks that birds or insects do, especially scaled up to carrying humans, you need a ton of sensors, feeding into something that can then make decisions. So it's more about programming, in a way, than anything else... the other critical piece is probably materials physics; imitating feathers or insect wings is pretty hard.
  • Now all we need to do is start building spy plains like this, then China can hit two birds with one stone (jet) next time....
  • I see your point, but I can't completely agree with you. Morphing may be too strong a word to use for what will probably come out of this technology without some major breakthroughs in materials. Most people associate morphing with radical changes in geometry. More than likely it will be just small changes in airfoil thickness and camber or twist of the wings to change the angle of attack distribution across them. Or even more likely this will result in active damping technology to provide a smoother ride. Piezoceramics they're using can only produce very small changes in size, and you have to use all sorts of mechanical amplifiers to make those changes really noticable, but it's at the expense of actuation force, or distribute them over a large sturucture. If I remember correctly, these fiber-composites and other types of piezoactuators have been used in scaled helicopter rotors and they were able to provide just a few degrees change in twist over the entire rotor blade. Unfortunatley this doesn't scale up to a full rotor. So as you can see, you're not producing large changes but in terms of performance they can be significant if applied correctly.

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