Morphing program, Shape-Shifting Air-Planes

Have ever seen an eagle flying? Well if you have not, you probably want to see these:

                                                    photos by Charles W. Melton

Now apart from the eagle looking good, there is something else to notice. Got it? No? Ok then have look at these:

What you should have noticed is the fact that eagle's wings are designed to change shape, where as our regular airplanes have wings which are pretty much the same at different parts of the flight (apart from the flaps and the ailerons etc .) So what is bad about it? the bad thing is that they are not efficient enough. In other words "Airplanes today are a design compromise. They have a fixed-wing structure that is not ideal for every part of a typical flight" says George Lesieutre, professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State.

To resolve this issue, engineers are working on wings that can change shape. In fact the concept is not even new. the idea is to make sure that the drag force is minimised throughout the flight. George Lesieutre says "Being able to change the shape of the wings to reduce drag and power, which vary with flight speed, could optimize fuel consumption so that commercial planes could fly more efficiently."

NASA has stated that there is more to this study. In fact they have been working on this for a few years. they call it the 'Morphing' program. The key thing that will allow them to make such air planes is that Morphing wings are not made of the conventional mechanically connected material, but instead they are made of nano-technological "smart" material, and even more, there will some sort of outer skin like scales of a fish. To give you an idea about the planes that we might use to travel from London to New York, lets look at this animation that can be found on YouTube:

So, shape-shifting is now more than just a concept. In fact, with other revolutionary ideas like X-48C being considered, there can be major changes to the way we think of air-planes today.

Next time we will see how close these engineering achievements are to the industry, and whether or not they will go the way that other revolutionary ideas like Concord went.