Twistable wings take flight
Twistable wings take flight
复制标题
可旋转的翅膀飞翔
DOI：
10.1109/mspec.2016.7551348
复制
发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
3.1
通讯作者：
S. Kota
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
S. Kota
一个多世纪前，第一批航空先驱找到了一种方法，使用带有襟翼的刚性机翼来产生足够的力量将重型飞机升上天空。这是人类历史上的伟大进步之一，也是交通运输新时代的开始。飞机以及依赖飞机的航空业现已成为世界上最大的行业之一，航空旅行的年收入超过 7000 亿美元。然而，商业航空公司超过 25% 的运营费用花在燃油上，这为该行业赢得了利润微薄的名声，今年的利润仅为 390 亿美元。与此同时，现代飞机机翼和发动机的效率已接近最高水平，这使得工程师很难产生额外的节省。然而，仍然存在一种有希望的策略——在飞行过程中改变机翼的形状。三十年来，航空航天公司、大学和国防实验室的工程师一直致力于研究可扭转的飞机机翼，这种机翼可以进行即时和精细的调整，以提高燃油效率。有了这些机翼，飞机设计师可以通过增加飞机的升阻比来接近最佳性能，升阻比是衡量空气动力学效率的指标，可响应速度、高度、气温和其他飞行条件的变化。
More than a century ago, the first aviation pioneers figured out a way to use rigid wings with flaps to generate enough force to lift a heavy craft into the sky. It was one of the great advances in human history and also the beginning of a new era in transportation. Airplanes, and the airline industry that depends on them, are now among the world's largest businesses, with air travel producing over US $700 billion in annual revenues. However, commercial airlines spend more than 25 percent of their operating expenses on fuel, earning the industry a reputation for razor-thin margins that will eke out just $39 billion in profits this year. Meanwhile, modern aircraft wings and engines have reached nearpeak levels of efficiency, making it exceedingly difficult for engineers to generate additional savings. And yet, there is one promising strategy that remains- changing the shape of the aircraft wing during flight. For three decades, engineers at aerospace companies, universities, and defense labs have been working on twistable aircraft wings that could be instantaneously and minutely adjusted to improve fuel efficiency. With these wings, aircraft designers could get closer to optimal performance by increasing an airplane's lift-to-drag ratio, which is a measure of aerodynamic efficiency, in response to variations in speed, altitude, air temperature, and other flight conditions.