Metamorphic Wings: The Future of Flight is Here
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
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This video is about the world of shape shifting wings, also known as morphing, or metamorphic wings! These insane designs can improve efficiency, performance, and control of planes, making them more sustainable due to lower emissions, and safer.
Intro card by Johannes Skolaude
johannesskolau.de/
Sources:
FishBAC: michael.friswell.com/PDF_Files...
Rui Wu: www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
NASA: www.nasa.gov/ames/feature/go-...
NUS: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...
00:00 Plane Wings
01:15 Metamorphic Wings
01:52 Wing Type 1
04:34 Wing Type 2
05:25 Experimental Wings
07:27 Flight Tests
Thanks for watching! - Ryan.
#breakthrough #flight #efficiency - Наука та технологія
First thing that comes to mind is temperature. Early mobilephone stations suffered terribly from temperature change, going out of tune as the weather changed. Getting these flexible surfaces to behave consistantly over the temperature range airliners experience will be a substancial challenge.
hopefully the skin could be easily replaced, perhaps as often as tires are replaced? A possible benefit for the flexible surface might be de-icing. Just flex the wing back-and-forth and maybe the ice would just fly off instead of needing to spray it or having an elaborate de-icing system (leading edge might still need one though)
Heating and insulation?
(For the moving parts... Good materials for the surfaces with constant elasticity over a range of about 100°C)
@@mcpr5971 mate I read the first sentence of what you wrote and it's already impractical and expensive
the way is through material engineering, it'll take a lot of money in R&D though
@@finonevado8891 airplanes were impractical and expensive. now they are everywhere.
@@mcpr5971 material engineering would be more reliable and might solve the temperature variation issue.
Replacing the surface would be impractical, it's ssentially replacing the entire wing, and you don't see that on big airliners
Flaps on landing. Whilst they do increase drag when deployed and therefore reduce airspeed as you say, their primary function is to maintain lift at lower airspeeds. 😊
- yes - control at speeds below "clean" stalling speed is necessary for safe landings- AOA is also lower with aerodynamic :aids deployed" - reducing likelihood of stall and also improving visibility on approach (and departure, though less flap (or none) is used), The conventional "energy management" during flight - uses the flap drag (along with airbrakes) to avoid overspeeding (or speeding back to cruise speeds) the aircraft on descent - down the hill - future more streamlined hybrid topologies - may be able to use motor regeneration (or deploy a - modified for purposes of regen - RAT on descent to landing) to make up for the drag loss, at the required minimum noise descents.... Of course the weight penalty of carrying everything during cruise needs to be "weighed up" - it is all a balancing act.
The FAA defines the flaps function as increasing the rate of descent without increasing airspeed.
@@pilotavery Think you meant decreasing rate of descent
@@felixu95 No, increasing rate of descent. It lets you Go down faster. Because normally You can't do a steep descent because you will go too fast by pointing the nose down and you can't slow down easily. The flaps let you do a steeper angle of descent.
Flaps let you increase your speed downward so that you can get downward faster without increasing your speed.
@@felixu95 No I didn't. Search the FAA for flaps.
They allow you to increase the rate of descent, descend faster without building up a bunch of airspeed.
The other way to do it is by diving downward and building up a lot of speed and dive towards the ground but flaps let you do it without increasing airspeed
Been watching your channel since the beginning, knew it was going to be a hit from day 1. Crazy to see how much it's already grown! So proud of you!
Back in the days when I was a sailplane pilot, for high speed flight when jumping from one thermal to another, we would select negative flap (flaps deflected upwards) to modify the aerofoil to a high speed, low drag section. Once in the thermal we would lower maybe 10° of flap and slow right down to about stalling speed to be in the rising air for as long as possible. This was a really efficient way of flying.
Even if shape shifting wings become a reality, Fowler style flaps will probably still be needed on large aircraft due to separation at large curvatures. Fowler flaps have several elements. The gaps between the elements allow air to bleed from below the wing to above which prevents separation. A shape shifting wing could not do this. Shape shifting does seem useful for all other moving surfaces like ailerons, rudders and trim surfaces. It would be really interesting if they could also change the thickness and other aspects of the section to tune efficiency to speed and angle of attack to move the drag bucket around.
- blown upper surfaces can be integrated into many designs.. at a cost of course...
And yet, the great master and teacher of all things, nature, shows how it is done: All birds wings are flexible and can be modified while flying to change shape, it is clear that nature is correct and we are wrong and the the future is flexible and elastic, not rigid and inflexible like now.
Yay! Fowler flaps. Thank you for the explanation. Now I know why sail GP boats have a 'split wing'. It's not really, as many say, but rather, a high aspect ratio wing with an oversized fowler flap, which bleeds excess pressure thru to the low pressure side (leeward on these foiling catamarans) to stop flow seperation and therefore drag, while directing lift strongly in the desired direction. Essentially a wing with landing flaps extended (lots of potential drag) but adjustable for lift/bleed/drag. These also are split longitudinallly on 3 parts, as sails need 'twist' in the upper sections to catch wind higher up and direct pressure down to the flatter lower sections. I have prototype RC catamaran I'm messing with at mo, and while sail gp foiling boats have had wing tech for 12yrs or more, I haven't seen any of this tech incorporated in their designs, which is exactly suited to this application, where plastic film covered carbon frame wing sails are currently the cutting edge. This skin warp tech could easily add control and power advantages to an already 90kph wing powered cat or trimaran. In fact, this has inspired me to make one. Any help greatly appreciated!
Cant slots be added to flexible wings for this purpose, even variable slots.
Pretty good channel. Good source material, supporting media and animation, and excellent speaking skills.
Liked, subscribed. Thank you, from across the pond.
The the extra maintenance cost, extra weight and the extra danger for flutter. Will probably prevent this from ever getting used in larger aircraft.
The same could be said about flaps?
one of them has only 1 tenth of the normal weight of other wings
"500 years ago I was an engineer at boeing and i came up with this design all on my own. thank god someone else saw it too wjeifijwejif"
This is super cool! Excited to see where this technology goes. Another great video :)
Thanks for this video. The most impressive thing, I think, is just how much research and how many examples are shown, from three different continents. I hope we'll see commercial applications of this tech quite soon.
Cheers bud, I think this was exactly the information I was looking for. Very well researched (from what I can tell).
Impressive!
Thank you very much showing us 😊
Thanks for this video - I have been looking for info on new metamorphic wings, but not knowing the technical names made it hard! I have been thinking about this a lot since I started flying.
Wildly interesting research. You have a perfect narrator’s voice. Content well structured and executed. Pleased I found your work. Subscribed immediately after first view.
Thank you! Very kind words
Am loving this channel
I spent some time designing a morphing wing which transformed from an ultralight (high speed low lift low drag low landing approach angle) configuration to a microlight (low speed high lift high drag high landing approach angle) configuration which used just two morphing control points, for a small 3 seat amphibian. It was also a weight shift control arrangement with the wing assembly attached above the fuselage with a stiff rhombic truss that was controlled with a standard stick arrangement either floor mounted or roof mounted, as was the 1935 Waterman Aerobile. I also included a Goldschmeid drag reduction feature in the fuselage ( a little more difficult in an amphibian fuselage), all of which I never got to test to see if it worked as envisaged.
I achieved the water breakaway function in the fuselage with a trim tab which reduced drag when retracted after lift off.
My 2 favourite aircraft are the Brazilian Airmax Seamax (which can land gear down on water) and the Waterman Aerobile. And the A380 of course.
Could you post on your UA-cam channel, I'm also interested in amphibious lightsport aircraft
Great , thanks for share
Damn, this was a good quality video. I have no real interests in planes, or wings, however this video was laid out easy to understand manner, and very informative.
Been a while since I have learnt this much eating my cereal
VERY WELL DONE , KUDOS to you and your quality research with clearly presented info ! ---- I'm looking forward to your future work, --- a BIG THUMBS UP for this offering ! --- from Canada J.
People are doing really good things with wings, good designs would like to see it on a whole plane in action for sure
I guess I was already subscribed. But I really like the video you just made. There’s more to aviation and aerodynamics than what has been done before. And there’s more to come
I would be VERY suprised if this method of increasing wing efficiency (over many tried and proven ones) would generate a net gain in efficiency at a useful scale and therefore cost savings once you factor in the absurd increase in conplexity, moving parts, weight and service requirements, not to mention the additional reinforement that would be required for the wing structure and the substantial decrease in usable capacity for holding fuel in the wings. Oh and then theres the manufacturing costs which would be... A lot.
Controllable drag…the side slip.
Wonderfully useful maneuver.
Like variable geometry wings in general, it makes it a lot easier to add STOL capability to an aircraft. You're not just increasing lift but also lowering stall speed, which they do a lot better than flaps.
The efficiency gains are mostly in flight because flaps often have a suboptimal shape during level flight
@@justicegusting2476 - frowned upon once the tailfin departs the scene... (that shouldn't happen but has and was blamed on the pilot "steering with rudder input", strangely... (irony) - the manual appeared to only rely on bank and yank (or just use inputs to autopilot for course LNAV/VNAV correction..- obvs. yaw damper should be on... (Does AutoPilot use differential flaperon/spoilers for yaw control in commercial jets ??)
it could be a fun project to engineer into hobbyist RC airplanes, though - where the consequences of feasibility per economics and reliability/safety are not so pivotal. And part of the Maker challenge too could be to devise instrumentation to provide performance feedback
i have to imagine the increased efficiency would make up for any increase in repair costs... i doubt the validity of your analysis, especially considering that electric is the future anyways. 125% is nothing to scoff at and leaves quite a bit of wiggle room
Thank you for producing this UA-cam. Some years back some fasteners broke and the wind-vane rudder on my sailboat dropped into the ocean. I have been looking to a way to replace this that will overcome the need for fasteners, that would likely just fail, again. This sort of aero foil, that does not twist, might be exactly the solution.
Cheers!
My concern is wear and tear every time it goes through a storm and material fatigue. I love that it seems to reduce drag lots and all smooth surfaces. I hope this gets off the ground soon as long as there is a standard for all actuators and are strong enough to last a certain amount of time before replacement. Nice to know they’re working on this kind of wing. I see this being used in other products and space technology. Morphing ships.
Very cool. I was thinking about this concept the other day.
Reminds me of the Aero-elastic wings E.D.I. had in the movie Stealth
Why did I have to wait decades until finally seeing the inner workings of the awesome linkage of airplane flaps
I work in airplane maintenance, structure engineering to be more specific, and damages on these surfaces are quite often, like dents, punctures, lightning strikes or disbond. I wonder how repaireable are these new metamorphic parts, I mean, they are awesome, but if you could provide some info about the repairability of these parts would be really appreciated
The Wright Flyers wings had a twisting motion.
I’m glad that you mentioned improving efficiency in wind turbines. I was also thinking of sailing ships. Any improvement for the large scale movement of freight without using the heavy fuel oil that they currently use would save money and pollution.🤔
The improvements in wind turbines he talked about seem extremely sus.
@@_aullik Agreed, current wind turbines are already reaching over 95% of the theoretical maximum.
There were only toroidal propeller/turbines has significant improvements, but for now it's also only in research/prototype stages due to complexity of the form and yet to be adopted on a scale. But generally it will not reduce pollution until someone invent safer energy source with the same efficiency. Maybe someone will adopt nuclear fusion reactors like that (ua-cam.com/video/_bDXXWQxK38/v-deo.html) but they are also early stages and not ready for commercial exploitation yet.
Shipping using wind... It just wont happen dude. At least not in the modern concept of shipping. If you are willing to go back to old clippers...
But for modern ships... Its not a matter of how you catchbthe energy from the wind, the problem is that even at 100% there is not enough energy.
Its like solar cars... You dont have enough energy even on ideal conditions.
Want clean shipping? Look into small nuclear reactors, that is the future.
Go look at the sailing videos, they have always had some form of morphing its just gotten a lot better in recent decades. That's what many of the adjustments to the mast & boom have been for. They are actually changing the shape of the airfoil. I am an aerospace engineer and some of the stuff being done on the America's cup boats is seriously impressive.
Brilliant videos. New subscriber. Look forward to seeing more. Cheers M8!
Morping structures are very nice - flutter sensitivity (and active control) become "key" in developing lightweight high speed surfaces..
I do like that you present potential issues with these along with their perks.
A cambered wing loses laminar flow on the top surface... segmented flaps and ailerons that direct air over the control surfaces help. The smooth morphing wind does nothing to address laminar flow separation in a highly cambered configuration. Morphing the camber of the wing to achieve laminar flow while in cruise flight is very helpful. The morphing leading edge is not new but the designs shown do offer some improvement. I think reliability and durability will be the key factors in making these new designs actually usable if and when they can achieve that.
Definitely a game-changer.
This is absolutely amazing, I want to make a RC plane with a warping wing, that would be very fun to see how it perfoms in different positions etc!
Think you for your vidéo, i didn’t Know this Kind of Wing.
Good video! If I'm not mistaken, the Wright Flyer had shape shifting wings (they called it wing warping). New materials make it feasible again.
I've been waiting for 'smorph' wings.
I made a dimpled wing out of aluminum foil once as an experiment.
I worked on a very similar design about 20 years ago in a AFRL funded project. It might have some applications for small vehicles but for larger vehicles there is no advantage over conventional “morphing” systems like flaps and slats.
Thank you for your comment but can you make some specific comparisons where conventional methods are better and why?
I don't know but I would guess cost, weight and complexity (which makes things more prone to failure and more expensive to maintain).
Also it can't be easy to make these things stand up to the insane dynamic loads of a jumbo jet flying through the air close to the speed of sound.
Lastly, getting something like this certified must be a nightmare.
So there could be some drones that could benefit for this type of wing then
the hen in my coop has been working on it since coming out of the incubator, just as successfully!
@@anmihovil The more moving parts, the more failure points, the more parts you have to inspect, the more inspection/maintenance access points you have to create the weaker the structure which you now have to reinforce with makes the wing heavier
Interesting idea!
Fractional step towards what the professionals (birds) do naturally.
So glad you did this. When I saw the title, I thought “I wonder if he knows about the Wright Brothers and Otto Lilienthal”?
Excellent video. Thank you.
“Creating SOME lift” Most lift is generated through the angle of attack, splitting the forward air movement into two vectors (maybe not the exact way to phrase this, but you get the idea) Nice piece. Thanks.
Great explanation
Ever since I learned in school that even dolphins use the trick to swim faster, I've been excited about morphing. I'm a comfort guy and love my motorcycle not so much for it's handling but for the option to electrically adjust the windscreen height to my actual speed, and electrically fold the mirrors when approaching a narrow passage, like a traffic jam (I just don't understand this isn't standard on every bike; it really should). So I fully believe in this development. When it comes to aerodynamics morphing is the holy grail.
On you last point about using it with wind turbines. Would make it far easier to control the speed of the blades in different wind conditions which helps not only the efficiency but also safety.
🟧♾️🟧 Excellent commentary and video production: thanks for this, a truly new era in wing technology. 🪽
Excellent reporting. Interesting information.
Magnetic slide joints are next and thank you young man...😊
I would like to see this on wind turbines and proven after years of hard service in the elements first.
Great content! Thanks for posting SUBSCRIBED!
Nice info, thank you for sharing it, keep it up :)
Fighterjets could use this to reduce drag at high speed and at low speed increase the lift over the wings.
0:41 flaps actually REDUCE lateral stability by moving the resultant center of pressure on either wing closer to the fuselage (and hence closer to the center of gravity of the aircraft)
Incredible!
More free CAD tools is what tigers loves the most. Thx 🙂
Whenever I hear anyone talking about 125% efficiency or similar, I would suggest they ither need basic science or language lessons. Even if you improve efficiency by 25% over what is currently achieved it is NOT 125% efficiency. Morphing wings have been tried before, and will become more accurately controllable in future, which makes them potentially more efficient than jointed flaps. Full credit to anyone working in this field.
Yes, 125% efficiency had me thinking of the movie "Spinal Tap" where their amps went up to 11 instead of just 10.
Amazing!
Re: Fowler flaps on sail GP boats. (cats/trimaran), thin film covered carbon wings already exist in this space, ideally suited to this surface warp tech. Sail GP boats have a 'split wing'. It's not really, as many say, but rather, a high aspect ratio wing with an oversized fowler flap, which bleeds excess pressure thru to the low pressure side (leeward on these foiling catamarans) to stop flow seperation And therefore drag, while directing lift strongly in the desired direction. Essentially a wing with landing flaps extended (lots of potential drag) but adjustable AOA for lift/bleed/drag. These also are split longitudinallly in 3 parts, as sails need 'twist' in the upper sections, to catch wind higher up and direct pressure down to the flatter lower sections. I have prototype RC catamaran I'm messing with at mo, and while sail gp foiling boats have had wing tech for 12yrs or more, I haven't seen any of this tech incorporated in their designs, which is exactly suited to this space, where plastic film covered carbon frame wing sails are currently the cutting edge. This skin warp tech could easily add control and power advantages to an already 90kph wing powered cat or trimaran. In fact, this has inspired me to make one. Any help greatly appreciated! 1mtr class foiling catamaran.
do you have more efficency during all the flight or only in the take-off?? If its only at take off its nothing
The first double surface hand gliders , and I think even the latest models that were made from Dacron did this. I believe it resulted more from speed and turning forces rather than mechanical. Interesting to see.
Many years ago I visited the Kansas Boeing factory (1980?) and they had an experimental aircraft there with warping winds. Obviously nothing ever came of it but they did allow me to look at it.
This technology is fantastic and very interesting. 👍
I liked this video. Well explained and easy to understand. It appears the new wing would not be strong enough to support engines?
Sweet! Onshape is cloud based so everyone can see my IP! what a great deal.
super cool love this stuff
NASA was the original organisation to test modern versions of shape shifting wings like 9 years ago. Love how other organisations in the aviation industry are using that research by NASA to move on make versions of their own. NASA worked on other components of aircraft to in order to decrease drag and increase fuel economy, NASA did all this to start working on a commercial product which is a blended wing body aircraft. They are working on the product alongside Boeing.
Edit: Thank me later for the info.
Going back to the Wright brothers wing warping concept. Good show.
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. AGAIN.
Its very cool as long as it works :D
Thanks for watching! It would be great to hear your thoughts on shape-shifting wings and maybe where you think they will become mainstream first? Also, if you want to design your own or anything else you can dream up, check out OnShape CAD for FREE at my link: onshape.pro/Ziroth
Here is an example of an online CAD file (it's really cool): cad.onshape.com/documents/5783cd9799b63cd7f8947218/w/988f55476c062d8d941744b3/e/97a09d6ab5c5c33b321c16d7?renderMode=0&uiState=63f4ef77e21f2e1671fc307a
Sorry buddy but on the aerobatics planes you are totally wrong on several points.
Your a pretty smart kid and you do some great videos but occasionally get stuff 100% wrong. You really need to occasionally go and ask people about these things.
I am an aerospace engineer with a pilots license and have flown competition aerobatics. Planes like the Extra 300/330, Yaks, Edeg450 and others mostly use a symmetrical wing sections so they have the same characteristics inverted as well as upright. That's needed for things like inverted spins and negative flick rolls.
Learning to fly for me was incredibly humbling because I had to start listening a lot more to a lot of people. I've become more used to ordering electricians and junior engineers about, which happens after 30+ years. It became even more so when I took up aerobatics. Suddenly I was the student with a head full of nothing.
Power to weight ratio and stability (YES STABILITY) are more important than anything else. The power thing is fairly obvious but ALL of the current aerobatics planes are very stable in flight unlike planes like the Pitts which are super manoeuvrable but also very twitchy. Its maybe the thing I find so technically impressive about those planes. They not only have incredible response to inputs but also high levels of stability. They stay where they are pointed.
Scoring in aerobatics is about how clean you fly the manoeuvres NOT how many Gs are pulled or how fast you roll or how clean your aerodynamics are. The scoring system is quite similar to gymnastics and diving. Judges don't score according to how hard a figure is they score out of 10 (with 1/2 marks) for how well its flown subtracting points (& 1/2 points) for mistakes. Its about how round a loop is or how straight a line is flown. The difficulty of a figure is covered by a degree of difficulty that we call the "k-factor" which is based on summing up the various parts of a figure.
The area of competition flying where this stuff is most likely to find a home is in gliding. if you want to ever go and see where the future of high efficiency aerodynamics is headed then go watch some of the gliding channels here on YT.
@@tonywilson4713 Thanks for the insights, that is really interesting. The comment about aerobatic planes was definitely said a bit off the cuff without much thought!
I was aware the aerofoils for aerobatic planes are symmetrical, with my thought being that this may be less efficient than a wing which could change dependent on the orientation of the planes. Without any real knowledge of the field this looks like it is solving a problem that doesn't really exist, but that's the best part about being an engineer anyway!
@@ZirothTech Here's something even weirder about a competition aerobatic plane. The propellers have quite fat blades which at first seems unusual for a high performance aircraft. because they are limited in diameter they need more blade to do what's needed. The other thing is that on vertical down lines you also need braking as in like putting your foot on the middle pedal in a car.
For instance a competition spin you have to complete the vertical line AFTER the spin. It goes almost against normal human behavior that after recovering a spin you then point the plane vertically at the ground. When you're doing this you aren't looking at the ground either you're looking at the wing tip gauge because for every 5deg you are off the vertical the judged deduct a point.
So you push into a perfect vertical dive and at that point you WANT DRAG not thrust. So at low engine power the constant speed prop goes flat and acts like a bag fat air brake.
When flying straight at the ground you don't want the prop puling you want it creating as much drag as possible. I once had a pilot tell me "You haven't experienced prop drag until you've flow a Yak." He then described how in his old plane that in a vertical down when he'd pull the engine back he'd fall forward into the harness.
Competition aerobatics is this weird set of trade-offs and until you get into it there's just stuff you'll never know.
Look under the wings for the small winglets that are attached to the ailerons.
Look at the ailerons near the wingtips. Several planes have the last part of the wingtip well ahead of the pivot point, just like many rudders have part of the rudder ahead of the pivot point.
Its not that different to other forms of competition inspired engineering. I had a boss who was into the top level of Australian open wheel racing. At the time all the cars were ex-F3000 from Europe with a locally sourced engine. Scott Dixon the Indy Car racer was in a rival team to my bosses team back then.
There's stuff about those cars and how they drivers drove them that 20 years later still amazes me.
Nice...Great reporting.
I wouldn't be able to imagine the machines in 100 years time. It's gonna be wild.
i have to imagine the increased efficiency would make up for any increase in repair costs... by a large margin
Interesting concept but as with ANYTHING in aviation, it has to be SAFE, robust, somewhat easy to maintain. I don't think you will see this technology on airliners any time soon. It has some promise, but flaps and aileron are critical surfaces that have to work EVERY time. A failure of some small component inside the wing could mean a crash.Again, VERY interesting designs, but you won't be seeing this on a Boeing or Airbus anytime soon. Could have some applications in GA, namely the experimental branches of GA aircraft. I could see this being more applicable to drone aircraft much sooner than with passenger planes. Thanks for compiling the information. Good technology to keep a look-out for in the future.
This is so cool
Hey Ziroth, I love the channel and how informative it is. However, I think the ailerons, rudder and the elevators control the stability and AOA of the aircraft while the flaps only influence the lift and drag of the aircraft's wings. Otherwise, great content!
Jumbo jets have leading edge slats that extend forward and down to increase the cord and camber as well.
I've been working on electric propulsion designs -it seems the next hurdle for this tech is modification of the chord length mid flight. When combined with distributed propulsion architectures this would have an enormous benefit. The other interesting area for research is the active control. Which will require complex adaptive measures to optimise.
Well, a lot of that is done in camera image stabilisation and focus, very much real-time applications, that use modelling of the performance to do feed-forward control strategies.
Flexible skin materials means they’ll be made out of non-metallic materials so they’re impacted by solar exposure, extreme low temperatures and temperature variances where parts materials interface. So any element that requires an isolated temperature protection to safely function can add more weight and complexity this taking up more volume of interior area that could be used for fuel (all 240 tons of fuel)
Th first diagram shows an aerofoil that is uniform on both sides. How does this generate lift? Love that wing @8:04!
In the 1989 book "Day of the Cheetah" Dale Brown had "Mission Adaptive Wings" on 2 fighter aircraft. Those are an extension of this idea. I don't remember if the "Old Dog" written in 87 had them.
The wright flyer didn’t have flaps, ailerons, or elevators it just used what they called “wing warping”. It worked in a very similar way but was hard to use due to its minimal affect compared to what is now considered traditional control surfaces. Funny how it’s almost a complete circle back to the start of aviation.
The weird part being the answer yes and no. Of course yes, because it is, but not because "aviation" knew it all along. Don't forget this is coming from a platform claiming 125% efficiency lol
Complete circle because we didn’t have the technology to make warping wings work in the kind of aircraft we wanted.
The Wright Flyer had a fairly conventional (though canard) elevator
*effect
No full circle. The weights abandoned the idea.
Interesting to hear about the weight saving - my dream of a luggable personal wing with variable geometry inches closer to reality...
It also gives a much more varied speed range for efficiency rather than the standard range for a fixed air foil, which is far more restricted. Mostly, I think it would improve handling and efficiency at slower speeds.
What a fun engineering challenge! Taking a wing that is designed to be stiff in bending and torsion, and then have the trailing edge bend and flex in torsion! Opposing requirements on the same structure!
I started work on this concept in my teens and ultimately developed as a proof of concept a hydrofoil with high grade silicone junctions/joints that allowed for natural metamorphic reaction that improved pump and stability and massively improved manoeuvrability, translated to air I have been working on flexible skin materials and horn operated metamorphic wings and empennages. My second full size aircraft design incorporated a scaled up but simplified variant of this system on the wings for roll control and stall delay, alas the lack of funding and technology to take it further it hasn’t gone past prototyping but the dream remains and there is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think about this and how to improve it - massively drawing from nature. We are a long way away from full morphing wings in conventional aviation since aviation is ironically incredibly conservative especially commercial aviation where new ideas take years to be incorporated or due completely in favour of keeping pax happy. Look at the mist modern airliner and compare it to a 1950’s design and you will be hard pressed to see massive differences
Unfortunately, you are right. In the 1960's when I was employed in aircraft design research, the all-wing aircraft was already being proposed as a better alternative to the common fuselage tube and the suspended engines below the swept-wing form, of most of the US transport-aircraft manufacturers. We are still in that inefficient state!
@@Macrocompassionhow old are you?
Let me guess. You were working, opened youtube just to relax a bit, found this attractive video about wings and now are watching until the end. The fun fact, it has nothing to do with your work but it is interesting anyways.
already goes on in the technology of the paragliding world with trims and speed bars on reflex wings.
Insane, I mean real engineering would love this video
These will be huge for light aircraft and drones. These is serious issues with these getting damaged or being strong enough for large aircrafts but not a problem for small crafts. Maybe they are solvable for large scale crafts but it's not a problem for small ones.
I could see this significantly reducing fuel costs and increasing range for future delivery bots. 1/weight of wing plus double lift or whatever 😮 that is huge for drones. The potential for this is massive 🎉
The origianl wright brother's aircraft had a shape-shifting or morphing wing. That aircraft twisted it's main wings to turn and did not have ailerons.
Comme les oiseaux.....
Wonder what a lightning strike would do to them? Exciting research nonetheless. Thank you so much for sharing these discoveries, the more good news and optimism about the future we can get, they better :)
In the past we looked at birds wishing we could fly. Now we look to fish to figure out how to fly more efficiently. Love it.
It’s amazing how much engineering is inspired by just common animals.
My big thoughts on this would be how it impacts the safety of the plane in case of failure. A lot of modern aircraft have systems in place to allow pilots to manually control flaps, ailerons, etc manually in case of some sort of failure through pulleys or applying pressure to the hydraulic fluid without an electric pump. Would it be possible to do something similar with these morphing wings that all seem to be completely reliant on electricity? Or would you be stuck with zero control of your aircraft if the electric controls failed?
These things could reduce the stiffness and makes it more prone to flutter. Mitigating them means to either increase the amount of material or add extra structures to control the stiffness.
I used to be employed by an aircraft manufacturing company that did much useful research on boundary-layer control by suction of air from the wing and fuselage surfaces. This was aimed at use to reduce the cruising-drag of long-range flying aircraft. It was effective due to it stopping the boundary layer from becoming turbulent and maintaining its initial laminar form and slowly growing thickness compared to that of turbulent boundary-layers. Now that we have projects for wing shape morphing, as illustrated in the above video, my suggestion is that this methodology should also be applied to boundary-layer control problems. It was shown that that the skin-friction (or turbulent flow) drag of a suitably sucked wing-surface, can be reduced by at least 75% and that for a whole aircraft of a suitable shape (more like a flying-wing) that at least 50% reductions in fuel consumption can be achieved. Please note that when a design change is made to reduce structural mass or fuel consumption of any regular aircraft, that the effect increases above that of the "simple" drag reduction ratio, due to the lowered mass of the vehicle requiring even less energy to drive it over the same distance and carrying capacity, and that at its lower (optimum) wing-loading it can fly at greater heights where the thinner air enables its ground-speed to be greater than previously. The advantages of wing morphing are huge, in design changes, resulting reduced fuel consumption, greater performance and general operations for these kinds of aircraft.
The only thing that I can add to this conversation is that such systems do require fly-by-wire.
General aviation (small planes) is unfortunately not there yet. Alone the use of electronics on regular flap and aileron assemblies (as used on military aircraft) would increase efficiency throughout the flight envelope.
And when any of these projected design materialize one will get to see the spectacle of an aircraft folding up into an origami crane after it is struck by lightning.
SMOOTH segue !