Changing the shape of wing design using "digital materials"
Though we're used to airplane wings with moving flaps that control the
craft's movements, the first flying machine built by the Wright brothers
in 1908 used a different technique called wing warping.
Instead of tilting airfoils attached to the trailing edges of wings,
warping uses wires and pulleys to alter the shape of wood and canvas
wings to perform the function that ailerons and flaps do in modern
airplanes.
According to the NASA/MIT team, there have been numerous attempts to
revive this technology, but these have relied on mechanisms inside the
wing to bend it. The problem has been that this machinery usually turns
out to be too heavy and complicated, which offsets any increases in
aerodynamic efficiency.
A newly developed wing architecture could greatly simplify the
manufacturing process and reduce fuel consumption by...
The NASA/MIT approach is to not just do away with the internal
mechanism, but to fundamentally redesign the structure of the wing so it
is capable of bending by itself. The design achieves this by dividing
the wing into lightweight, overlapping scale- or feather-like
sub-segments. These are supported by tunable and actively deformable
modular building blocks, dubbed "digital materials," that are made of
carbon fiber-reinforced polymers that can be quickly engineered and
snapped together and allow the wing to deform while maintaining a
smooth, aerodynamic surface.
This modular approach would allow the individual support pieces to be
mass produced and combined in an almost endless variety of shapes, which
could be constructed by simple minature robots that crawl along the
exterior or even the interior of the structure as it is constructed.
Though the researchers have already developed prototype robots, they
built the initial test structure by hand and used skin panels instead of
scales that would be used the ultimate version.
The units used were morphed manually using two small motors to twist the
wingtips and bend the wing uniformly along its entire length.
The purpose of this test piece was to get the wing to twist in the same
manner as if it was made of separate scales instead of panels by
fine-tuning the structure so it twists on command into the desired
aerodynamic shape.
So far, wind tunnel tests have shown the test wing has aerodynamic
properties of a conventional wing weighing 10 times more. The team then
built a drone aircraft flown from the ground by a certified test pilot,
who found it responsive enough to do aerobatics.
Gershenfeld sees this technology as not only leading to super-efficient
long-range drones, but as having applications beyond aerospace
engineering, inlcuding in wind turbines, skyscrapers, bridges, and space
structures. It could also be used to create soft robots that can bend
wherever desired without joints, are lighter than equivalent robots, yet
can maintain the desired level of stiffness for the job. Repairs of
machines built with the units would be cheaper and easier as damaged
units could be replaced by maintenance robots with new ones.
MIT <
http://news.mit.edu/2016/morphing-airplane-wing-design-1103
<http://news.mit.edu/2016/morphing-airplane-wing-design-1103> View
gallery - 5 images
John Dinkel
Where are the puns? :-)
Paul Lamar
Paul,
On an even less punishing note. A I read these advances in aero, I
think to myself that we are on the cusp of our ability to control and
develop materials that will take us to the stars. Can our control of
gravity, magnetism and dark matter be that far in the future? Maybe 10
years????
Or maybe we’ve had much of this tech since Roswell . . .
John Dinkel
IMHO all the space stuff is a huge waste of money.
Paul Lamar
The nation that controls magnetism controls the galaxy or universe. Dick
Tracy Dale Davies
ROFL
Paul Lamar
BMW has been looking at this Idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy2PYRl78Us
Andrew Cambell.
Looks like a space frame covered in fabric. Count Zeppelin would roll
over in
his grave :-)
Paul Lamar
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