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A team of innovative NASA engineers, among other students, has partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate students to upgrade the aircraft wing. traditional.
The researchers unveiled on Monday the concept of a re-designed wing that, in their view, would reduce costs and increase the performance of future aircraft. Their approach was detailed in an article published in the journal Smart Materials and Structures.
Similar in size to a single-seater aircraft wing of just over 15 meters, the revamped aircraft wing is made up of hundreds of small cube-shaped pieces that allow it to " change shape to control theft of the plane "explained in a press release.
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Ultralight materials are bolted together and covered with a thin polymer material that forms the backbone of the aircraft part. The researchers say that it would improve the energy efficiency of the wing.
Benjamin Jenett, a graduate student at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms who participated in the project, said the wings were optimized for every part of the flight – from take-off to landing and so on.
Researchers at NASA and MIT have just released their new concept of wing design this week.
(Eli Gershenfel / NASA Ames Research Center)
"A constantly deformable wing could provide a much better approximation of the best configuration for each step," says MIT in an online statement, citing Jenett. "If it was possible to include motors and cables to produce the forces needed to deform the wings, the team went even further and designed a system that automatically responds to changes in its aerodynamic loading conditions by changing its shape – a kind of reconfiguration process of passive wings with automatic adjustment. "
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NASA engineer Nicholas Cramer agreed that the lighter wing was also more flexible, saying it was better equipped to handle a variety of "stresses" in the sky.
"We are able to gain in efficiency by adapting the shape to the loads from different angles of attack," Cramer said. "We are able to produce exactly the same behavior that you would have actively, but we did it passively."
The researchers confirmed that this new concept was an improvement over their previously tested wing, which they had built themselves. However, they think that the assembly process could be simplified.
Researchers say the wings are optimized for every part of the flight – from take-off to landing, to everything in between.
(Eli Gershenfel / NASA Ames Research Center)
"Although this version was assembled by hand by a team of graduate students, the repetitive process is designed to be easily performed by a swarm of small, simple stand-alone assembly robots," says MIT, adding that the subject should be described in detail in a future research article.
"We now have a manufacturing method … parts are cheap," added Jenett. "We have boxes and boxes, all the same."
The frame of their futuristic aircraft is also much less dense than the current versions.
"They have the same stiffness, but ours is less than a thousandth of a density," Jenett explained.
Engineers will undoubtedly continue to make adjustments to perfect their design; However, they said the results are promising. In the journal, the researchers described how the wings behaved at the NASA wind tunnel testing site.
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