Metamorphic Wings: The Future of Flight is Here

conventional plane wings are carefully designed to degenerate lift the shape of the wing known as an aerofoil IS key to this process as air flows over the wing it creates a difference in pressure between the upper and lower surfaces ultimately resulting in left but what happens when a pilot needs to control an aircraft's speed altitude or angle of attack during takeoff Landing or other Maneuvers this is where flaps come in flaps are hinged surfaces located on the trailing edge of the wing they can be extended or retracted to modify a wing shape and alter its aerodynamic performance to increase lift for takeoff increase drag to slow for landing or improve control and maintain stability interestingly though the first ever aircraft wings from the Wright brothers didn't actually have flaps in fact it was actually a kind of metamorphic Wing these were called warping wings and mimicked a bird's Wing form in practice since most Wing warping designs involve flexing of structural members these were difficult to control and liable to cause structural failure however thanks to Modern materials and Technologies shape-shifting wings are making a comeback metamorphic aerofoils are adaptive wings that can change their shape depending on the flight conditions think of them as a Transformer Wing that similarly to flaps are designed to optimize performance efficiency and maneuverability however because of their shape and precision they can actually do these things even better than conventional flaps these amazing Wings work using Cutting Edge technology like shape memory Alloys smart materials and advanced actuators when specific conditions are detected these components work together to change the aerofoil shape allowing the aircraft to adapt to its environment the first shape-shifting Wing is called the fishbone active camber morphing structure or Fishback for sure this biologically inspired concept consists of four main elements a compliant skeleton core a pre-tensioned compliant skin a pair of tendons coupled to a spooling pulley and a non-morphing main Spa testing was performed in a wind tunnel at Swansea University in Wales and they've found that there can be significant reductions in drag whilst retaining the same lift meaning the Fishback metamorphic Wing can have 125 percent the aerodynamic efficiency of a standard flap controlled Wing two thoughts I had about these wings were firstly the structural integrity and secondly their ability to work with wings that also hold fuel however the Fishback wing and others we'll see in this video have shown suitable strength when tested in the lab and still enable a significant volume for fuel in the main Wing structure though I guess this may be less of a concern in the hydrogen and electric planes that are currently being developed the next Wing is this morphing aerofoil design by Rue woo at the University of Manchester the wing is also inspired by the tale of a fish and the results they have achieved are extremely impressive this small-scale prototype shows it in action and was 3D printed based on a Model built in computer-aided design software like onshape who are supporting this video onshape is a professional grade computer aided design software that is free for makers and hobbyists because onshape is built with a cloud native architecture it enables loads of amazing features such as real-time collaboration seamless integration with mobile and tablet use for IOS and Android and built-in product data management also because it's cloud-based you won't ever have to feel the pain of your CAD software crashing and losing all of your work something that I love about onshape is that file sharing can be as simple as just sharing a link in fact I've actually shared the file for the engine of a plane via a link in the description which you should open in a new tab so you can check it out after this video onshape is also continuously adding new features with computer aided manufacturing coming soon so make sure to get a free account using onshape.pro xeroth which is also linked in the description designed by the founders of SolidWorks onshape is a CAD software you can trust to make your work faster in a flexible and agile way all through the power of cloud computing so make sure to check it out in my link below now back to the shape-shifting Wing by Rue Wu which is a carbon fiber composite aerofoil with an active trailing Edge and multiple degrees of freedom in the finalized Wing the Innovative structure will be driven by an electrical actuation system that uses linear ultrasonic Motors an ultrasonic motor is a type of electric motor that produces its motion through ultrasonic vibrations enabling electrical energy to be converted into motion by the inverse piezoelectric effect the inverse piezoelectric effect is the ability of the material to generate mechanical stress or movement in response to an electrical signal however in the Prototype small Servo Motors were used for demonstration testing of the wing showed that all morphing States provided a higher lift to drag ratio than conventional hinge controlled surfaces okay so these next two wings are slightly more experimental but still extremely interesting nonetheless the first of these metamorphic Wings is from NASA and MIT and is made from carbon fiber reinforced plastic and assembled by small robots with their new approach the team designed a system in which the entire Wing can be modified and twisted uniformly along its length by activating two small motors that apply a twisting pressure to each wingtip the key to this New Concept is the array of tiny carbon fiber reinforced plastic that is used to build the wing these subunits can be put together into an infinite variety of shapes just like Lego blocks the team conducted wind tunnel tests with the new Wing system and it showed that it has comparable aerodynamic properties to traditional airplane wings but at one tenth of the weight I think this will have some really interesting applications but I have to think that all of these small components will probably add to the amount of failure points there are and the flexible skin used to cover the microstructures could also be prone to damage this second one is the incredible morphing Wing from the National University of Singapore it has macro fiber composite actuators bonded to the inner surface of the skin to enable the whole Wing to morph these Innovative actuators are low-cost piezoelectric devices designed for controlling deflections in beams and panels using an electrical signal I could imagine these being used in acrobatic planes enabling the airfoil to change shape as they fly upside down to enable increased control and maneuverability another design using these actuators has also been made by the University of Michigan where they use the macro fiber composite actuators to control just the trailing edge of the wing this also helps to increase the aerodynamic efficiency though I have seen concerns that if something was to break it would be a large expensive part of the plane that would have to be replaced in this final section of the video let's check out some of these in action firstly on a model plane by AF research lab the plane is able to smoothly take off and flies much like a conventional flap controlled plane however we can see it is also able to make incredibly quick adjustments to the shape of each Wing independently now if you want to see these on the real thing you're in luck because NASA has actually been working with a company called flexis for nearly a decade now flexis have developed a full-sized morphing wing and project fuel savings up to 11 using their experimental data the testing showed the morphing Wing took 20 percent less power to operate than conventional flaps and appears to have been pretty successful overall they are now working towards a commercial product and are looking to expand to wind turbines where they have said the morphing aerofoil could increase energy captured by as much as 15 percent as you're still watching please subscribe to the channel because I think you'll like some of the other videos that I make like this one on a liquid battery that means you could recharge or refill an electric car much like a conventional one I've been run and thanks for watching

Channel: Ziroth

Views: 829,466

Keywords: Science, Engineering, STEM, Electric, Zero, Tesla, News, Research, EV, Battery, flight, plane, efficiency

Id: OKWurIhfkhQ

Length: 8min 43sec (523 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2023