http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/05/63361?

currentPage=all Big Flap Over Future Flight

Seeing little flapping specks that hover in the bright blue yonder or change shape in the blink of an eye? You could be looking at the next generation of aircraft. Government and university researchers are developing aircraft that mimic the flying methods of birds, whether it's by flapping or by changing the shape and angle of the wings on the fly. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla are working on developing the world's first flapping-wing, unmanned aircraft driven entirely by solar power. The aircraft is being designed to flap its wings not with conventional mechanical parts, but with an exotic material that can deform in an electric field like an artificial muscle. The craft is made to fly at altitudes of 30,000 to 40,000 feet. With a wingspan of about 3 meters and thin membrane-like wings, the bird-like craft would be able to flap its wings once every one to 10 seconds, and have the flight profile of an eagle. K.M. Isaac, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UMR, who is helping to develop the aircraft for NASA, says that using a renewable power source could help the aircraft stay airborne for weeks. "Instead of storing the energy in a battery, we plan to store it as potential energy," says Isaac. "When it has a lot of energy, it will start flapping its wings like a big bird. By doing that, it will go up in altitude. Then in the night, for example, when there is no solar power available, it will start gliding just like a bird until the sun comes up again." Supported by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, the research explores the potential of smart materials that can be used to "morph" wings when an aircraft needs to dive, climb or glide. But that's not the only way that wings can change shape. George Lesieutre and his team at Penn State University are working on creating wings with a segmented skin composed of overlapping plates similar to the scales of a fish. Rather than stretching to enable morphing, adjacent skin sections -- supported by a shapechanging internal structure -- could slide over one another. The approach uses an underlying skeleton created by repeating metal diamond-shaped units connected together by compliant "shape memory alloys." Internal tendons would change the shape of the frame by pulling the units into the desired configuration. Due to the shape-memory alloys, the structure would spring back to its original form when the tendons release. Other groups are experimenting with piezo-electric materials and wings that extend in length. Immediate goals involve replacing traditional control devices such as rudders and elevator flaps with seamless wings that are more fuel-efficient and lightweight to begin with. "It is a regime of aerodynamics that was largely ignored for a long time," says Aaron Altman, assistant professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Dayton. "We are just beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible." Recent research and development pursued by Boeing's Phantom Works, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA Dryden has resulted in the Active Aeroelastic Wing, or AAW, technology, which has an element of sliding skin in its approach. The eight-year project cost about $41 million, and the aircraft has flown more than 50 times. Experts believe, however, that the most exciting part about morphing aircraft is yet to come -- with new aircraft missions that haven't even been considered previously. "Think of a peregrine falcon, the world's fastest bird; it achieves 200 mph during a dive," says Erik Bollt, associate professor of mathematics, computer science and physics at Clarkson University. "It makes a wide-open wing configuration which creates high lift for soaring, but pulls the wings swept back for high-speed dives. More ambitious programs are aimed at aircraft that radically change shape as much as the peregrine falcon." And radical is what Darpa is shooting for. Its program aims at creating nothing less than a multi-role aircraft that alters to suit the mission environment. Darpa's Morphing Aircraft Structures program moved into the second phase this April. During the first phase, Lockheed Martin and Hypercomp/NextGen designed, fabricated and tested actuators, mechanisms, components and subsystems for morphing wing structures that could operate at low speeds and whose area could change more than 150 percent. In the 18-month second phase, the contractors hope to create adaptive wing prototypes, which are to be tested in mid-2005 in the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

A statement issued by Darpa reads: "The program will create adaptive wings that enable in-flight air vehicles to change shape. This adaptive wing might enable a single autonomous, military air vehicle to perform hunter-killer missions much like now performed by the Predator drone when it is armed with Hellfire missiles. However, while the Predator is a slow-moving target itself, the morphing wing would loiter like the Predator, but would be much quicker to respond to both ground and air threats. "We aim to develop technology for a new military capability that would enable a revolutionary transformation of military air vehicles from large expensive systems of piloted aircraft to smaller systems of lethal, autonomous aircraft with combined roles such as locating and destroying targets with a single aircraft instead of a large group of aircraft with single roles." While experts doubt manned flapping aircraft would ever be useful, most are unanimous about the potential of morphing aircraft. "I would not be surprised to see a commercial aircraft with certain morphing technologies such as seamless morphing wing flaps in, say, five to 10 years," says Pier Marzocca, assistant professor in the department of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at Clarkson University. "As for fully shape-changing manned aircraft like the peregrine falcon, I should think it would be well beyond the 10-year horizon."