Airbus AlbatrossONE Aircraft Flaps Its Wings on Successful Demo Flight - autoevolution

depolitikblog.blogspot.com

Man has long tried to imitate birds in building all types of aircraft, to varying degrees of success. A new concept aircraft from Airbus, now in its second stage of testing, is taking biomimicry to a whole new level.

5 photos

AlbatrossONE is a scale model aircraft that flaps its wings for more efficient flight, much like the bird that it draws on for inspiration. AlbatrossONE is now in its second stage of testing, with Airbus reporting last week a very significant milestone: the scale model has successfully completed a proof-of-concept demo flight.

If you ever wanted to see grown men spending months in a row playing with awesome toy planes, the video below delivers the goods. That’s AlbatrossONE, the scale model concept from Airbus, which comes with longer wings that can bend at the tip, thus allowing for more efficient flight. More efficient flight means less fuel consumption, which, in turn, means less emissions and, of course, optimized costs.

The inspiration for this aircraft is the albatross, which has the ability to bend its wings to surf wind. “The albatross’ wing-tips are actually somewhat analogous to semi-aeroelastic hinged wing-tips,” project leader Tom Wilson explains. “The albatross can ‘lock’ its wings at the shoulder to travel long distances, but when faced with wind gusts, it can ‘unlock’ its shoulder to better navigate wind speeds.”

The aircraft has semi-aeroelastic hinged wing-tips, so they flap freely, alleviating wing loads and avoiding tip stalling. The flapping tips don’t transfer bending loads to the main wing and allow the aircraft to surf through gusts of wind.

“This requires less material, such as carbon-fiber reinforced polymers, to make the wing strong enough to withstand gust loads,” James Kirk, chief engineer on the project, adds. “It not only reduces the weight of the aircraft, but the length of the wing-tip can be extended because the extra loads are not passed to the main wing.”

Kirk adds that, in theory, longer wings would have longer flapping wing-tips, but there is still a lot of work to be done in order to prove that this is a viable product. They are determined to continue with the project, in the hope it will inspire other engineers to think about the future of aviation in terms of cuttings down emissions and costs.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"Demo" - Google News
October 18, 2020 at 11:13AM
https://ift.tt/2H9gKUN

Airbus AlbatrossONE Aircraft Flaps Its Wings on Successful Demo Flight - autoevolution
"Demo" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35q1UQ2
https://ift.tt/2Wis8la