What Happened To Ring Wing Planes?

aircraft you see on screen is different in one very big way the wings are round more specifically the wings form a circle all the way around the fuselage a closed Wing or more accurately a ring wing around the plane this Innovation while at first looks like an AI generated plane is actually a design that is far more fuel efficient generates more lift and was almost the future of aircraft design but the ringwing commercial plane that would be buried and never see the light of day what would this Ringling plane be like to fly why did we never build it and whatever happened to the concept completely join us today to discover what goes around comes around in the world of wacky Aviation [Music] like posters merch and supporting a channel and Creator who has made weekly videos for you for years that's right the fountain explained merch store is open and I've tried really hard to come up with legit cool stuff for Aviation fans so check it out and let me know what you think link it below our story of the ring wing aircraft has its roots at the dawn of Aviation not the Nazis this time of course for those watching the channel for a while but actually the French an early example of the closed Wing was on the Bell Riot 3 aircraft built by Luis oberez and Gabriel Wilson the lifting surfaces comprised of two annual Wings mounted in Tandem and the later version replaced the forward annual wing with a biplane and added a Canard 4 plane to make it a three service aircraft it was able to leave the ground in small Hobs before being damaged Beyond repair but that leads us to the future with our hero of the story Lockheed advancements in the ring wing concept especially the French veto fighter aircraft after World War II made Lockheed wonder if this concept could also be used for future fighter jets but then they thought why not make it a little bigger it's the 1980s and Lockheed needs a new aircraft to beat back MD and Boeing for the trophy of the world's best commercial aircraft Builder so enter in our aerospace engineer star Rolo Smithers you might have actually heard of him before as he's the brainchild of the Lockheed flatbed aircraft that we've already covered on the channel so you know that this concept is just as wacky but it's this ring wing commercial monster that he came up with that's the focus of today's video and boy it is one of the most Fantastical aircraft I've ever had the pleasure of showing there is a lot of strange phenomena out there in the sky not just this crazy ring plane everything from flying spy balloons to Tic-Tac UFOs of the Navy card track down to even strange giant flying objects over cities that we can't explain but they all have one thing in common aliens specifically smooth skin gray aliens that have youthful faces to die for a secret like their anti-gravity technology that they keep to themselves well that is until now foreo has come up with a device called the UFO 2 which is an at-home supercharged facial machine that's a 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with the title of the ring wing Lockheed commercial transport it would be 52 meters long with a wing uh circumference of 7.4 meters the wing itself would be a low mid length attachment before arching backwards 27 degrees to attach itself to the tail of the aircraft the overall height is a substantial reaching up to 23 meters meaning it wouldn't really fit in typical hangers for say the 737 and with the blueprints you can see how just how low the actual fuselage is compared to the wing there are two control surfaces along the tail to control the direction of travel thanks to no flaps on the rank Wing itself on board it would mimic the configuration of the Airbus A320 or the 737 carrying around 120 passengers in a 3-3 short haul confu duration making it perfect for short haul routes because of the fuel efficiencies of the design it would be perfect for those commuter destinations that don't really reach high altitudes such as New York to Boston London to Manchester or my personal favorite Sydney to Melbourne this concept reaches fire of some media testing like the article you can see here and initial discussions with Airlines naturally these were just part of lockheed's portfolio of innovative future ideas to make it seem like their stock standard designs were more futuristic now I can't say for sure if any Airlines ever really considered the ring wing concept but you know that it definitely got a buzz and alas this concept never really went further than wind tunnel tests now I should mention that Belarus got this concept working on a small crop duster aircraft and it's nonetheless impressive a few prototypes flew but funding was eventually pulled by Russia and the project was abandoned there is also another type of aircraft similar to this called The Box Wing not a ring wing and that is a whole nother video because even Boeing is building a prototype one if you want to see that right in the comments and don't forget to click subscribe so you don't miss it so I'm guessing at this point of the video you're wondering g-neck this looks wacky but would the ring wing actually fly well let's dive into how rang wangs work and you'll finally understand why we don't have this Beast today a closed-wing system where the wing loops around the horizontal axes and reconnects to the fuselage of the aircraft has several major advantages because the plane doesn't have actual wingtips that means wingtip vortices and the down wash of the wing that they cause aren't nearly eliminated and the wing can generate more lift meaning shorter runways less Fuel and no impact on Crosswinds a triple win well kinda while Rolo was imaginative for sure he was a little bit more loose on the physics of Aviation while I joined Wing aircraft provides significant induced drag and structural advantages they also suffer from increased parasitic drag and require careful design to avoid issues like flutter and Boundary layer separation essentially in layman's turns the fuel saved from the increased lift is canceled out by the increased drag now this is something that is not apparently obvious when you you're using wind tunnel tests because a lot of the time the wings used on these planes have an infinite aspect ratio exactly the same as a circular ring wing something that they quickly discovered in the 1980s we also have to mention that the weight of having a whole nother wing on top essentially like a biplane just adds to the weight of the aircraft and then you still need more fuel in addition there is also something called a wing twist you might notice that on model planes the wing isn't flat but rather twists away slightly from the fuselage specifically a Twist to the wing where the on-board position is at a higher angle of attack than the outboard this means that your onboard will stall before your outboard which has the control surfaces and thus you can recover from a store such a system wouldn't work on a ring wing plane the benefits of this design outweigh the drawbacks only if the aircraft is well optimized for the mission such as short runways or heavy cross winds but that's not all we also have to talk about money designing a joined Wing aircraft requires strong interaction between different disciplines such as structures and aerodynamics this makes it difficult for the normal team of engineering Specialists to optimize the design additionally this type of design is not well understood or mature as conventional planes which makes it more expensive to achieve all of those are potential benefits therefore an established manufacturer may choose to stick with what they know and what the customer is willing to expect instead of Designing some crazy New Concept in summary there's a reason why we abandoned bi-play designs just like the ring wing it's not the most efficient but that didn't stop Rolo Smithers Lockheed Visionary and aviation pioneer from imagining The Impossible he would unfortunately be taken from us much too young due to cancer and we never realize many of these designs and I thought why not dedicate this video to him and many other forgotten Builders of a future that we could have had this one is for you Rolo thanks for watching

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 1,999,878

Keywords: aviation history, annular wing, air travel, ring wing, annular wing aircraft, air travel tips

Id: b6W_-zqSPw0

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023