Flexible Wings for Adaptive Flight

This project focused on designing and manufacturing a prototype of a flexible wing that can then be adapted for various flying regimes. Starting from a baseline wing shape, the team designed a flexible structure that is actuated using an electrical current that provides geometry changes in real-time.

David Anderson
Zach Posch
Jacob Spanier
Canton Matson

Mentor:
Dr. Jordi Estevadeordal

[jcshook]

Love how the design is inspired by nature. Honestly proves how much it is absolutely necessary to the advancements we have made.

[cdogdeluxe]

The one thing that comes to mind is the stresses when bending. Helicopters rotors can bend a lot length wise and they can handle that but the stresses of bending them both over the length and cord could be a bit too much for our materials. This is still such a cool idea I hope someone takes this further in the future. If someone knows better feel free to school me cause I’m not an engineer.

[crazydrifter]

I don't know bro it's never a good sign for the hypothetical end product when it's too expensive to buy material for a scale model.

[SirFloofy]

Flexible wings have been a concept for a while now. I remember reading about them in science fiction as a child. Fricken awesome to see someone do some work on them.

[edwardkelly]

Very cool...I would like to see wind tunnel tests...

[jamesramsey]

i can see pressure being used to change the pitch as a viable option

[ScoutSniper]

Well Done, and I'm very impressed with your team's thought process.

[lucasvanhamburg]

I think you might wanna try nylon filament, its more flexible and can handle a lot more heat.

[Opusss]

adaptive surfaces will be the next great leap in aeronautics and it will be huge. imagine wings that can morph their sweep angle for faster more efficient flight. Or entire airplane surfaces that can morph to steer a craft. I think this field is extremely exciting.

[TheSpectralArtisan]

But where are the wind tunnel tests?! 🥺😜 I was interested to see how they turned out!

[j.o.n.a]

I love seeing this. At the moment I am in highschool and I will do a similar report like this about a project I am currently doing. I’m glad a fell upon this so I can plan for my report

[NeurolinguisticTraumatolog]

Cool! Thanks for sharing! Wait or next video)

[austinrowe]

This is a very fascinating concept. I think it would be difficult to achieve morphing airfoil of a rotating prop. But this would be interesting to see if it would be more efficient for fixed wing aircraft’s to have morphing wings. This would give the airfoil much less drag but still controllable. Also eliminate a lot of hydraulic weight from the plane. But I’m not an engineer so I probably have no idea what I’m talking about

[juancagonzaleztx]

I love that they showed all the failures!

[lohikarhu]

i see you commented a day or two ago...interesting project.
i think SMA material is a good choice for fixed wing, and i did some work with a company in Cambridge who do cell phone camera focus and stabilization...it can be fast, but needs "look-ahead" control and needs isolation from support structures to keep it fast and controllable.

[tmpace]

Very cool idea but was there any stress/deflection analysis for flight loads? Is the structure ridged enough to not deflect under lift?

[orpheuscreativeco]

Cool concept 👍 Moving parts = faster degradation (unfortunately). Temperature differences might effect the performance of the material to flex as needed. These are just thoughts. Obviously testing is needed. Thanks for sharing this idea! 🙌

[indridcold]

Fun fact:
The first wing design that incorporated shape warping to change air deflection was used in the very first, fully controlled flight. Americans credit that flight as the first flight. Although incorrect, it was the first fully controllable flight and the most reliable flight. The Wright Brothers flier had no ailerons. They depended on wing warpage through pulling ropes to warp wings to behave like ailerons. Now, aviation has come full circle and caught up with the pioneers. Perhaps putting small canards in the front and large wings on the back of a plane, would make for superior small, lite, planes. The stall speed for the smaller canards would be higher than the stall speed for the larger wings. This will make it very hard to have a tail stall spin. For a helicopter, the blade design on the video would be incredible. With two counter rotating large rotors on top, without a tail rotor, this blade design would be genius!

[cptairwolf]

I'm assuming the goal here would be to deflect a rotor blade electronic rather than requiring a complex squashplate mechanism? I don't think there's any electrically actuated system that would be strong enough yet fast enough to deflect a spinning rotor blade based on cyclic input.

[Jiniraj]

Where u bought MFC. Could you plz provide the link for buying MFC