NASA has successfully applied a new technology in flight that allows aircraft to fold their wings to different angles while in the air.
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The recent flight series, which took place at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, was part of the Spanwise Adaptive Wing project, or SAW, Matt Kamlet, NASA, writes.
This project aims to validate the use of a cutting-edge, lightweight material to be able to fold the outer portions of aircraft wings and their control surfaces to optimal angles in flight.
SAW, which is a joint effort between Armstrong, NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, or GRC, Langley Research Center in Virginia, Boeing Research & Technology in St. Louis and Seattle, and Area-I.
in Kennesaw, Georgia, may produce multiple in-flight benefits to aircraft in the future, both subsonic and supersonic.
Folding wings in flight is an innovation that had been studied using aircraft in the past, including the North American XB-70 Valkyrie in the 1960s.
However, the ability to fold wings in flight has always been dependent on heavy and bulky conventional motors and hydraulic systems, which can be cumbersome to the aircraft.
The SAW project intends to obtain a wide spectrum of aerodynamic benefits in flight by folding wings through the use of an innovative, lightweight material called shape memory alloy.
This material is built into to an actuator on the aircraft, which plays a vital role for moving parts on the airplane, where it has the ability to fold the outer portion of an aircraft's wings in flight without the strain of a heavy hydraulic system.
Systems with this new technology may weigh up to 80 percent less than traditional systems.
The recent series of flight tests at Armstrong successfully demonstrated the material's application and use, by folding the wings between zero and 70 degrees up and down in flight.
One of the most significant potential benefits of folding wings in flight, however, is with supersonic flight, or flying faster than the speed of sound.
"The performance of this new alloy that we developed between NASA and Boeing really showed outstanding performance," said Jim Mabe, Technical Fellow with Boeing Research and Technology.
"From the time we started initial testing here at Boeing, up to the flight tests, the material behaved consistently stable, and showed a superior performance to previous materials." ■