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Morphing Plane Wings for Efficient Flights
Roland Piquepaille writes "Airplanes, whether manned or unmanned, need to travel at various speeds. For example, a surveillance plane needs to fly fast to reach its destination point. Then, it needs to reduce its speed to achieve its surveillance mission. But with its fixed wings, it doesn't offer the same level of efficiency during these two phases. That's why Penn State engineers have devised airplane wings that change shape like a bird and have scales like a fish. Right now, the team has only built a tabletop model. So it will be a long time before you catch a plane and watch the wings disappear by looking through the window. This overview contains more details and references, including a couple of images describing the work done so far."
I'd want them to work on the technology a bit before this happened though. Wouldn't want the plane suddenly falling apart way up in the sky.
GERONIMO!!!!
Anything that bends that isn't organic tends to eventually weaken and break. And the organic stuff only manages to keep structural integrity through constant ongoing repair.
The maintenance up-time required for a flexing wing will probably be ridiculous, unless it contains self-repairing abilities.
I seem to recall that there are also effeciency benefits to such "Morphing Wing" technology.
I seem to recall that one of the Wright brothers observed that birds seem to turn by twisting their wings, and actually built the Wright Flyer with cables that twisted the wings in order to control it.
F-111 Mission Adaptive Wing (MAW). Flight test results here
No, not just changing the sweep as in a normal -111, -14, B-1, Mig-27 or Blackjack, but rather the shape of the wing changes as needed.
Back in the 60s and 70s, Pat Beatty and Fritz Johl did similar work with glider wings. Obviously, with much different technology. They flew their prototypes, and raced them competitively. In addition to variable-geometry, they also expeimented with variable-span!
The technology of the day was far less sophisticated than today, but it's an interesting bit of aeronautical history nonetheless.
Although I met Pat Beatty once or twice during the early 80s, I was too young to have seen his variable-geometry and variable-span creations fly, first hand. Most of what I know about them I heard from the old-timers in my flying club, who had been active in gliding competition during the 60s.
Sadly, there seems to be very little surviving literature available on the Beatty and Beatty-Johl designs. Google turns up a few grainy photographs, and articles in ancient editions of Soaring Magazine and Krautkorant (Cape Gliding Club Newsletter), but that's about it.
Pat's wife Beatty Rowell also made significant contributions to aviation, both as a pilot and meteorologist, and wrote the book "Just for the Love of Flying". Time for a re-read, I think.