First thing that comes to mind is temperature. Early mobilephone stations suffered terribly from temperature change, going out of tune as the weather changed. Getting these flexible surfaces to behave consistantly over the temperature range airliners experience will be a substancial challenge.

Flaps on landing. Whilst they do increase drag when deployed and therefore reduce airspeed as you say, their primary function is to maintain lift at lower airspeeds. 😊

Been watching your channel since the beginning, knew it was going to be a hit from day 1. Crazy to see how much it's already grown! So proud of you!

Back in the days when I was a sailplane pilot, for high speed flight when jumping from one thermal to another, we would select negative flap (flaps deflected upwards) to modify the aerofoil to a high speed, low drag section. Once in the thermal we would lower maybe 10° of flap and slow right down to about stalling speed to be in the rising air for as long as possible. This was a really efficient way of flying.

The the extra maintenance cost, extra weight and the extra danger for flutter. Will probably prevent this from ever getting used in larger aircraft.

Even if shape shifting wings become a reality, Fowler style flaps will probably still be needed on large aircraft due to separation at large curvatures. Fowler flaps have several elements. The gaps between the elements allow air to bleed from below the wing to above which prevents separation. A shape shifting wing could not do this. Shape shifting does seem useful for all other moving surfaces like ailerons, rudders and trim surfaces. It would be really interesting if they could also change the thickness and other aspects of the section to tune efficiency to speed and angle of attack to move the drag bucket around.

I would be VERY suprised if this method of increasing wing efficiency (over many tried and proven ones) would generate a net gain in efficiency at a useful scale and therefore cost savings once you factor in the absurd increase in conplexity, moving parts, weight and service requirements, not to mention the additional reinforement that would be required for the wing structure and the substantial decrease in usable capacity for holding fuel in the wings. Oh and then theres the manufacturing costs which would be... A lot.

I spent some time designing a morphing wing which transformed from an ultralight (high speed low lift low drag low landing approach angle) configuration to a microlight (low speed high lift high drag high landing approach angle) configuration which used just two morphing control points, for a small 3 seat amphibian. It was also a weight shift control arrangement with the wing assembly attached above the fuselage with a stiff rhombic truss that was controlled with a standard stick arrangement either floor mounted or roof mounted, as was the 1935 Waterman Aerobile. I also included a Goldschmeid drag reduction feature in the fuselage ( a little more difficult in an amphibian fuselage), all of which I never got to test to see if it worked as envisaged. I achieved the water breakaway function in the fuselage with a trim tab which reduced drag when retracted after lift off. My 2 favourite aircraft are the Brazilian Airmax Seamax (which can land gear down on water) and the Waterman Aerobile. And the A380 of course.

I worked on a very similar design about 20 years ago in a AFRL funded project. It might have some applications for small vehicles but for larger vehicles there is no advantage over conventional “morphing” systems like flaps and slats.

"500 years ago I was an engineer at boeing and i came up with this design all on my own. thank god someone else saw it too wjeifijwejif"

Pretty good channel. Good source material, supporting media and animation, and excellent speaking skills. Liked, subscribed. Thank you, from across the pond.

Wildly interesting research. You have a perfect narrator’s voice. Content well structured and executed. Pleased I found your work. Subscribed immediately after first view.

Thanks for this video. The most impressive thing, I think, is just how much research and how many examples are shown, from three different continents. I hope we'll see commercial applications of this tech quite soon.

This is super cool! Excited to see where this technology goes. Another great video :)

I work in airplane maintenance, structure engineering to be more specific, and damages on these surfaces are quite often, like dents, punctures, lightning strikes or disbond. I wonder how repaireable are these new metamorphic parts, I mean, they are awesome, but if you could provide some info about the repairability of these parts would be really appreciated

I’m glad that you mentioned improving efficiency in wind turbines. I was also thinking of sailing ships. Any improvement for the large scale movement of freight without using the heavy fuel oil that they currently use would save money and pollution.🤔

Thanks for this video - I have been looking for info on new metamorphic wings, but not knowing the technical names made it hard! I have been thinking about this a lot since I started flying.

Cheers bud, I think this was exactly the information I was looking for. Very well researched (from what I can tell).

Impressive! Thank you very much showing us 😊

Why did I have to wait decades until finally seeing the inner workings of the awesome linkage of airplane flaps

Morping structures are very nice - flutter sensitivity (and active control) become "key" in developing lightweight high speed surfaces..

Am loving this channel

Thank you for producing this KZfaq. Some years back some fasteners broke and the wind-vane rudder on my sailboat dropped into the ocean. I have been looking to a way to replace this that will overcome the need for fasteners, that would likely just fail, again. This sort of aero foil, that does not twist, might be exactly the solution. Cheers!

People are doing really good things with wings, good designs would like to see it on a whole plane in action for sure

I guess I was already subscribed. But I really like the video you just made. There’s more to aviation and aerodynamics than what has been done before. And there’s more to come

My concern is wear and tear every time it goes through a storm and material fatigue. I love that it seems to reduce drag lots and all smooth surfaces. I hope this gets off the ground soon as long as there is a standard for all actuators and are strong enough to last a certain amount of time before replacement. Nice to know they’re working on this kind of wing. I see this being used in other products and space technology. Morphing ships.

Damn, this was a good quality video. I have no real interests in planes, or wings, however this video was laid out easy to understand manner, and very informative. Been a while since I have learnt this much eating my cereal

A cambered wing loses laminar flow on the top surface... segmented flaps and ailerons that direct air over the control surfaces help. The smooth morphing wind does nothing to address laminar flow separation in a highly cambered configuration. Morphing the camber of the wing to achieve laminar flow while in cruise flight is very helpful. The morphing leading edge is not new but the designs shown do offer some improvement. I think reliability and durability will be the key factors in making these new designs actually usable if and when they can achieve that.

Reminds me of the Aero-elastic wings E.D.I. had in the movie Stealth

“Creating SOME lift” Most lift is generated through the angle of attack, splitting the forward air movement into two vectors (maybe not the exact way to phrase this, but you get the idea) Nice piece. Thanks.

Excellent video. Thank you.

Great , thanks for share

Very cool. I was thinking about this concept the other day.

This is absolutely amazing, I want to make a RC plane with a warping wing, that would be very fun to see how it perfoms in different positions etc!

0:41 flaps actually REDUCE lateral stability by moving the resultant center of pressure on either wing closer to the fuselage (and hence closer to the center of gravity of the aircraft)

Good video! If I'm not mistaken, the Wright Flyer had shape shifting wings (they called it wing warping). New materials make it feasible again.

Interesting idea! Fractional step towards what the professionals (birds) do naturally.

I do like that you present potential issues with these along with their perks.

VERY WELL DONE , KUDOS to you and your quality research with clearly presented info ! ---- I'm looking forward to your future work, --- a BIG THUMBS UP for this offering ! --- from Canada J.

Great explanation

Definitely a game-changer.

So glad you did this. When I saw the title, I thought “I wonder if he knows about the Wright Brothers and Otto Lilienthal”?

On you last point about using it with wind turbines. Would make it far easier to control the speed of the blades in different wind conditions which helps not only the efficiency but also safety.

Think you for your vidéo, i didn’t Know this Kind of Wing.

The Wright Flyers wings had a twisting motion.

Flexible skin materials means they’ll be made out of non-metallic materials so they’re impacted by solar exposure, extreme low temperatures and temperature variances where parts materials interface. So any element that requires an isolated temperature protection to safely function can add more weight and complexity this taking up more volume of interior area that could be used for fuel (all 240 tons of fuel)

Brilliant videos. New subscriber. Look forward to seeing more. Cheers M8!

Re: Fowler flaps on sail GP boats. (cats/trimaran), thin film covered carbon wings already exist in this space, ideally suited to this surface warp tech. Sail GP boats have a 'split wing'. It's not really, as many say, but rather, a high aspect ratio wing with an oversized fowler flap, which bleeds excess pressure thru to the low pressure side (leeward on these foiling catamarans) to stop flow seperation And therefore drag, while directing lift strongly in the desired direction. Essentially a wing with landing flaps extended (lots of potential drag) but adjustable AOA for lift/bleed/drag. These also are split longitudinallly in 3 parts, as sails need 'twist' in the upper sections, to catch wind higher up and direct pressure down to the flatter lower sections. I have prototype RC catamaran I'm messing with at mo, and while sail gp foiling boats have had wing tech for 12yrs or more, I haven't seen any of this tech incorporated in their designs, which is exactly suited to this space, where plastic film covered carbon frame wing sails are currently the cutting edge. This skin warp tech could easily add control and power advantages to an already 90kph wing powered cat or trimaran. In fact, this has inspired me to make one. Any help greatly appreciated! 1mtr class foiling catamaran.

The wright flyer didn’t have flaps, ailerons, or elevators it just used what they called “wing warping”. It worked in a very similar way but was hard to use due to its minimal affect compared to what is now considered traditional control surfaces. Funny how it’s almost a complete circle back to the start of aviation.

Many years ago I visited the Kansas Boeing factory (1980?) and they had an experimental aircraft there with warping winds. Obviously nothing ever came of it but they did allow me to look at it.

Incredible!

NASA was the original organisation to test modern versions of shape shifting wings like 9 years ago. Love how other organisations in the aviation industry are using that research by NASA to move on make versions of their own. NASA worked on other components of aircraft to in order to decrease drag and increase fuel economy, NASA did all this to start working on a commercial product which is a blended wing body aircraft. They are working on the product alongside Boeing. Edit: Thank me later for the info.

I would like to see this on wind turbines and proven after years of hard service in the elements first. Great content! Thanks for posting SUBSCRIBED!

I've been waiting for 'smorph' wings. I made a dimpled wing out of aluminum foil once as an experiment.

I've been working on electric propulsion designs -it seems the next hurdle for this tech is modification of the chord length mid flight. When combined with distributed propulsion architectures this would have an enormous benefit. The other interesting area for research is the active control. Which will require complex adaptive measures to optimise.

More free CAD tools is what tigers loves the most. Thx 🙂

Whenever I hear anyone talking about 125% efficiency or similar, I would suggest they ither need basic science or language lessons. Even if you improve efficiency by 25% over what is currently achieved it is NOT 125% efficiency. Morphing wings have been tried before, and will become more accurately controllable in future, which makes them potentially more efficient than jointed flaps. Full credit to anyone working in this field.

In the 1989 book "Day of the Cheetah" Dale Brown had "Mission Adaptive Wings" on 2 fighter aircraft. Those are an extension of this idea. I don't remember if the "Old Dog" written in 87 had them.

Flaps are for increased lift. Ailerons are for control. It isn't pressure applied to change the airfoil shape, it is force. The Wright Brothers achieved control of their Flyer by selectively increasing and decreasing the angle of attack of the airfoil along the wing. The higher to angle of attack the higher the lift and vice versa.

🟧♾️🟧 Excellent commentary and video production: thanks for this, a truly new era in wing technology. 🪽

This is so cool

Amazing!

Nice info, thank you for sharing it, keep it up :)

super cool love this stuff

Going back to the Wright brothers wing warping concept. Good show.

Ever since I learned in school that even dolphins use the trick to swim faster, I've been excited about morphing. I'm a comfort guy and love my motorcycle not so much for it's handling but for the option to electrically adjust the windscreen height to my actual speed, and electrically fold the mirrors when approaching a narrow passage, like a traffic jam (I just don't understand this isn't standard on every bike; it really should). So I fully believe in this development. When it comes to aerodynamics morphing is the holy grail.

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. AGAIN.

Interesting concept but as with ANYTHING in aviation, it has to be SAFE, robust, somewhat easy to maintain. I don't think you will see this technology on airliners any time soon. It has some promise, but flaps and aileron are critical surfaces that have to work EVERY time. A failure of some small component inside the wing could mean a crash.Again, VERY interesting designs, but you won't be seeing this on a Boeing or Airbus anytime soon. Could have some applications in GA, namely the experimental branches of GA aircraft. I could see this being more applicable to drone aircraft much sooner than with passenger planes. Thanks for compiling the information. Good technology to keep a look-out for in the future.

The origianl wright brother's aircraft had a shape-shifting or morphing wing. That aircraft twisted it's main wings to turn and did not have ailerons.

Magnetic slide joints are next and thank you young man...😊

The first double surface hand gliders , and I think even the latest models that were made from Dacron did this. I believe it resulted more from speed and turning forces rather than mechanical. Interesting to see.

Hey Ziroth, I love the channel and how informative it is. However, I think the ailerons, rudder and the elevators control the stability and AOA of the aircraft while the flaps only influence the lift and drag of the aircraft's wings. Otherwise, great content!

My big thoughts on this would be how it impacts the safety of the plane in case of failure. A lot of modern aircraft have systems in place to allow pilots to manually control flaps, ailerons, etc manually in case of some sort of failure through pulleys or applying pressure to the hydraulic fluid without an electric pump. Would it be possible to do something similar with these morphing wings that all seem to be completely reliant on electricity? Or would you be stuck with zero control of your aircraft if the electric controls failed?

This technology is fantastic and very interesting. 👍

These things could reduce the stiffness and makes it more prone to flutter. Mitigating them means to either increase the amount of material or add extra structures to control the stiffness.

Fighterjets could use this to reduce drag at high speed and at low speed increase the lift over the wings.

Excellent reporting. Interesting information.

already goes on in the technology of the paragliding world with trims and speed bars on reflex wings.

Insane, I mean real engineering would love this video

Sweet! Onshape is cloud based so everyone can see my IP! what a great deal.

I wouldn't be able to imagine the machines in 100 years time. It's gonna be wild.

What a fun engineering challenge! Taking a wing that is designed to be stiff in bending and torsion, and then have the trailing edge bend and flex in torsion! Opposing requirements on the same structure!

Let me guess. You were working, opened youtube just to relax a bit, found this attractive video about wings and now are watching until the end. The fun fact, it has nothing to do with your work but it is interesting anyways.

NASAs and the Wales project look very similar...I always wondering about a wing flexible, to behave in this same style but from wing root towards the wing tips, same way as the vortex forms so the wing would have its highest flex moment or torsion in the wing tips being harder on the wing root...seems that from leading edge to trailing edge it's more plausible...I was wrong 😊

Interesting to hear about the weight saving - my dream of a luggable personal wing with variable geometry inches closer to reality...

Its very cool as long as it works :D

I started work on this concept in my teens and ultimately developed as a proof of concept a hydrofoil with high grade silicone junctions/joints that allowed for natural metamorphic reaction that improved pump and stability and massively improved manoeuvrability, translated to air I have been working on flexible skin materials and horn operated metamorphic wings and empennages. My second full size aircraft design incorporated a scaled up but simplified variant of this system on the wings for roll control and stall delay, alas the lack of funding and technology to take it further it hasn’t gone past prototyping but the dream remains and there is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think about this and how to improve it - massively drawing from nature. We are a long way away from full morphing wings in conventional aviation since aviation is ironically incredibly conservative especially commercial aviation where new ideas take years to be incorporated or due completely in favour of keeping pax happy. Look at the mist modern airliner and compare it to a 1950’s design and you will be hard pressed to see massive differences

With the planned material, how will they manage lightning strikes? Composites use a copper mesh that managed a composite wing, maybe something similar?

These will be huge for light aircraft and drones. These is serious issues with these getting damaged or being strong enough for large aircrafts but not a problem for small crafts. Maybe they are solvable for large scale crafts but it's not a problem for small ones. I could see this significantly reducing fuel costs and increasing range for future delivery bots. 1/weight of wing plus double lift or whatever 😮 that is huge for drones. The potential for this is massive 🎉

In the past we looked at birds wishing we could fly. Now we look to fish to figure out how to fly more efficiently. Love it.

Nice...Great reporting.

It’s amazing how much engineering is inspired by just common animals.

I used to be employed by an aircraft manufacturing company that did much useful research on boundary-layer control by suction of air from the wing and fuselage surfaces. This was aimed at use to reduce the cruising-drag of long-range flying aircraft. It was effective due to it stopping the boundary layer from becoming turbulent and maintaining its initial laminar form and slowly growing thickness compared to that of turbulent boundary-layers. Now that we have projects for wing shape morphing, as illustrated in the above video, my suggestion is that this methodology should also be applied to boundary-layer control problems. It was shown that that the skin-friction (or turbulent flow) drag of a suitably sucked wing-surface, can be reduced by at least 75% and that for a whole aircraft of a suitable shape (more like a flying-wing) that at least 50% reductions in fuel consumption can be achieved. Please note that when a design change is made to reduce structural mass or fuel consumption of any regular aircraft, that the effect increases above that of the "simple" drag reduction ratio, due to the lowered mass of the vehicle requiring even less energy to drive it over the same distance and carrying capacity, and that at its lower (optimum) wing-loading it can fly at greater heights where the thinner air enables its ground-speed to be greater than previously. The advantages of wing morphing are huge, in design changes, resulting reduced fuel consumption, greater performance and general operations for these kinds of aircraft.

The only thing that I can add to this conversation is that such systems do require fly-by-wire. General aviation (small planes) is unfortunately not there yet. Alone the use of electronics on regular flap and aileron assemblies (as used on military aircraft) would increase efficiency throughout the flight envelope.

SMOOTH segue !

It also gives a much more varied speed range for efficiency rather than the standard range for a fixed air foil, which is far more restricted. Mostly, I think it would improve handling and efficiency at slower speeds.

Moving parts …

they need to be able to curve the wing laterally as well, not just front to back but side to side, arc up and down and even cup the wing for landing, plane can just drop in like a parachute, or how birds do it, that's what they do when they land they cup their wings and drop right in, or fold them in for gaining speed so forth

And when any of these projected design materialize one will get to see the spectacle of an aircraft folding up into an origami crane after it is struck by lightning.

i have to imagine the increased efficiency would make up for any increase in repair costs... by a large margin