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NASA Smartmorphing Materials and Structures
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.
NASA's Ames Research Center is in Moffett Field, CA which borders Mountain View, CA.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
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.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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Back then, we all flew in things called "jet airplanes", some of which were made by outdated companies with names like "Boeing" and "McDonnell-Douglas".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...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
FYI: The Ames Research Center is probably in Ames, IA, not in Mountain View, CA.
----- "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
try building one yourself then.
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 - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
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.
~~~~~~
under-paid karma whore
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.
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 (Original Video Animation) means that it was released first on video.
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.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
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....
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I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
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.
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I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
Except for Challenger we quite possibly would :P
this sounds more like ornithopers from dune, than it does voltron. trust me, i would know.
-=tonyt=-
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.
i ve.html- ---------
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/act
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"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
[o]_O
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?
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.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Here 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
They use a principle known as supercavitation and rockets.
From this month's Scientific American
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.
- Dan I.
Although rubber bands could make really cool take off system from the Aircraft Carriers.
God spoke to me
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.
Berk Watkins
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....
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -Einstein