Another nice article on this. Looks like the students need to work on their RC flying skills bit more though (see video).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aircraft designers crafting more bird-like wings
(J. Moore,
AOPA Online, 10/05/12) A leading edge that can change its shape was tested in August and September in Russia. Photo courtesy German Aerospace Center (DLR). Turns out, those bicycle mechanics from Ohio were on to something with those warping wings of theirs. The invention of ailerons and flaps relegated warping wings to the sidelines, but a growing number of aeronautical engineers are turning back to that page and developing wings that are more distinctly bird-like, able to change their shape to best suit a given phase of flight, or offer more precise control. The various approaches hold promise to produce future aircraft that are more nimble, efficient, and quiet. There’s a chance that pilots of the future may not even know what an aileron is without cracking open a history book, or a flap, for that matter. Leading edge slat? What’s that? The slats, which are needed on heavy airliners to boost lift at low speeds, are the target of a European collaboration—the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), is working with Airbus, EADS Innovation Works, and Cassidian Air Systems. Wind tunnel tests conducted in August and September in Russia showed promise for another strategy: change the shape of the leading edge using piston actuators inside that change the shape of a composite leading edge. The design still needs to be refined to handle icing, lightning, and bird strikes, but the initial results show promise: a 12 percent reduction in drag, and a noise reduction, achieved by eliminating the gaps between control surface and wing. Another approach to warping wings was demonstrated in 2010, with successful test flight of a radio controlled model airplane controlled with similarly seamless surfaces. Demonstrated in a YouTube video, the concept model responds to control inputs with curling deflections of portions of the wing, and horizontal and vertical stabilizers that correspond to where standard control surfaces would be placed. Instead of actuators or servos, the lightweight design uses a small microchip to coordinate electrical current, energizing and de-energizing strips of macro fiber composite (MFC) materials—a NASA invention from 2000 now licensed to private manufacturers. The wings and stabilizers are filled with MFCs, able to twist and deflect, driven by materials that act more like muscle than machine...