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NASA Smartmorphing Materials and Structures

Posted by Hemos on 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.

13 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More NASA Projects: by Jordy · · Score: 2

    NASA's Ames Research Center is in Moffett Field, CA which borders Mountain View, CA.

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  2. Underwater Applications by Paul+Komarek · · Score: 3

    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

  3. Re:Not for 20 years by NMerriam · · Score: 5

    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    Back then, we all flew in things called "jet airplanes", some of which were made by outdated companies with names like "Boeing" and "McDonnell-Douglas".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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  4. Hmm... by cr0sh · · Score: 2

    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!

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  5. Not for 20 years by BierGuzzl · · Score: 3

    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.

    1. Re:Not for 20 years by screwballicus · · Score: 3

      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).

  6. Neat Idea by Life+Blood · · Score: 3

    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.

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  7. more applications... by sleepykid · · Score: 4

    There's also a vision for overweight computer nerds to morph into agile, high speed marathon runners.

  8. Re:Oh yea? by belroth · · Score: 2

    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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  9. actually... by tonyt · · Score: 2

    this sounds more like ornithopers from dune, than it does voltron. trust me, i would know.

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  10. More NASA Projects: by AMuse · · Score: 3

    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
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  11. Where have I heard this before? by GearheadX · · Score: 3
    • 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
  12. Re:It only... by pavonis · · Score: 2

    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.