Perfect wings

[Head in the clouds]

I guess the ants got hold of an insect with beautiful wings, because I found these on the verandah yesterday -

 

 

On close inspection the structure of them is truly astounding. Nature is almost invariably right about the best and most efficient way to go about things, and finding these reminded me that some fella in the US was working on replicating the structure of dragon-fly wings for use on an LSA-type aircraft.

 

IIRC he had made one set of prototype wings, I think they were about 3-4m span, so about half scale. He made them without molds, by winding strands of glass and carbon fibre around nails in a curved board and then infusing them with epoxy resin. I recall that they were working well on a large model with quite a heavy wing-loading. Although the structure was similar to the insect wings he'd changed the shape to suit powered/gliding flight rather than ornithoptering.

 

The covering, or clear part, was Tedlar or Mylar and the interesting aspect was that the wings were un-strutted and designed to be flexible like a fishing rod. This meant that they didn't need to have a 6+G capability because under load they would flex and 'spill' air, thereby unloading themselves, in a similar way a mono-hull yacht unloads the mast by heeling under a sudden gust.

 

I haven't seen anything about it since then, and can't find anything on the net at the moment other than for use as flapping robotic drones - I last saw it about 4-5yrs ago - so I was wondering whether anyone else has kept up with his progress, if any?

 

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Past efforts to replicate the wings of birds and insects were doomed to fail, but with so many new wonder materials (and electronic control systems) becoming available, the time for copying nature may have arrived.

 

My current back-of-an-envelope project is to develop large-scale feathers. Until we have the technology to grow them biologically, perhaps we can fabricate carbon fibre feathers. If mounted with mechanisms to rotate and twist them in flight we might approach the efficiency of nature's best- and be able to fold the wings away before to taxiing off the strip.

 

Why do little aeroplanes need to be so heavy? Do we need a 65kg engine? By starting with a super light power source we can scale down every other component, hopefully reducing final weight by a large margin.

 

If I start work next week I might have the prototype ready for flight testing before my nineties... Therein is the age old problem: by the time we get the damn thing built we may be too old and slow to test it- and should we expect some young pilot to risk their necks to test fly our contraption?

 

 

[Deskpilot]

Beautiful photos mate. What camera/lense combination?

 

 

[winsor68]

I gave you an optimistic because you stated "Nature is almost invariably right about the best and most efficient way to go about things"...

 

I am not sure this is true when talking aviation. It appears to me nature does what it can with what it has...but flying animals are not more efficient than aircraft. As an example...modern sailplanes are more efficient than soaring birds.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...modern sailplanes are more efficient than soaring birds.

I doubt that, Win. The best sailplanes have impressive glide/sink ratios, but if you include the energy required to get them aloft they'd surely lose to the birds.

 

 

[winsor68]

I doubt that, Win. The best sailplanes have impressive glide/sink ratios, but if you include the energy required to get them aloft they'd surely lose to the birds.

The best soaring birds have a glide ratio of no more than 20 to 1.

 

 

[facthunter]

How would that be verified? (the birds performance) Albatross can lock their wings and spend months away from land, most of it in the air. A commercial jet has a glide ration near 20: 1. A bird doesn't bother to have a vertical tail It bends it's head and tilts it's tailfeathers. The feathers have unbelievable boundry layer control . Have a look at an eagles wingtips when landing. Nev

 

 

[winsor68]

How would that be verified? (the birds performance) Albatross can lock their wings and spend months away from land, most of it in the air. A commercial jet has a glide ration near 20: 1. A bird doesn't bother to have a vertical tail It bends it's head and tilts it's tailfeathers. The feathers have unbelievable boundry layer control . Have a look at an eagles wingtips when landing. Nev

It's an accepted fact. Your prejudices might not want to believe it but it just is. Sorry to burst your bubbles. Nature is not perfect....nor even particularly nice or good. Mankind is far superior.

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

Beautiful photos mate. What camera/lense combination?

My highly treasured Nikon Coolpix P600 which is an astounding little unit I bought for a trip to Kruger Park earlier this year.

 

It looks like an SLR but is tiny by comparison and about a third the weight, small enough to take it everywhere. It doesn't have interchangeable lenses but I haven't needed them because the zoom goes from very wide angle (equivalent of 24mm on my SLR), to 60x (that's optical zoom, not electronic) which is the equivalent of a 1500mm lens on the SLR. One of the many really amazing thing is the image stabilisation which allows you to take crystal clear hand-held shots at the full 60x zoom. I couldn't get that out of the SLR with a lens of anything more than 300mm ... and that's in bright lighting.

 

Better still, I picked it up in a JB HiFi sale for just $300.

 

I think I recall you're keen on photography Doug, so I've attached a selection of the 3000 or so pics I took on that trip, size-reduced for the site but you might like some of them anyway -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

It's an accepted fact. Your prejudices might not want to believe it but it just is. Sorry to burst your bubbles. Nature is not perfect....nor even particularly nice or good. Mankind is far superior.

I was prepared to accept your figures for birds' glide performance Win, but that part about Mankind being far superior seems a bit tenuous- even blasphemous.

People have been making flying machines for a century or so, and even our best still have very narrow performance bands. To be comparable we need a man-carrying machine that can takeoff pretty much vertically, soar for hours and cross oceans then land on a handkerchief. All this and it would carry its own complex equipment to convert a variety of low-energy sources into fuel.

 

 

[winsor68]

I was prepared to accept your figures for birds' glide performance Win, but that part about Mankind being far superior seems a bit tenuous- even blasphemous.People have been making flying machines for a century or so, and even our best still have very narrow performance bands. To be comparable we need a man-carrying machine that can takeoff pretty much vertically, soar for hours and cross oceans then land on a handkerchief. All this and it would carry its own complex equipment to convert a verity of low-energy sources into fuel.

Ah...yes. But we've only just got started...

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Nature is almost invariably right...

Creation is amazing, speaks of the design skills of the creator of course. Thanks for the photos HIC, nice.

 

 

[rgmwa]

Creation is amazing, speaks of the design skills of the creator of course.

You're right Gnu. Creation is truly unbelievable.

rgmwa

 

 

[DrZoos]

Our problem is multi dimensional....big passengers and big engines, then lots of unnecesary crap that birds dont carry like avionics, instruments, redundancy items etc.... In my opinion This all ads up very fast forcing a huge structural penalty

 

If you where to design for one very very light pilot....no avionics or equipment , a 2 stroke engine and short fuel range, i think you could design a very different aircraft to the current fleet. birds have extremely short range and are constantly re fueling... almost thier entire structure is power producing, where as our entire weight is a power penalty....

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

DrZoos you are in error. Birds also have avionics, etc, plus something we are a bloody long way from developing: self-repairing structures. As you say, many are quite short-range, but even some small models roam the planet and can travel enormous distances without refueling.

 

 

[Deskpilot]

Thanks HIC. Lovely images.

 

 

[Oscar]

Many glider pilots have had close experiences with Wedgetail eagles. Was in a thermal once, Wedgie 'dropped in' in me, using the lift off the outside wing as its own personal standing wave; slid on to about three or four feet away ( his inner wing was all but brushing the canopy), checked the vario, gave me a deprecating look and peeled off to find a better thermal nearby..

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

I've had a hawk slide the length of my Blanik wings, riding the leading edge lift, rising a little to clear the canopy.

 

Bloody freeloaders!

 

 

[facthunter]

But they understand aerodynamics. Migratory birds fly enormous distances burning up a bit of body fat. They have been seen at heights as high as Everest Nev

 

 

[Oscar]

Pelicans..... Have been seen at 18,000 feet. I used to watch a flock that spent the day at Yarralumla Bay, then in the later afternoon would take off and move over the big intersection between Treasury and the National Library at about 10 feet AGL, gain an effortless 100 feet or so, then head for the night roosting at the top end of Lake Burley Griffin. Maybe flapped their wings three or four times for the whole trip.

 

Canberra Gliding Club trip to Narromine one year; four of us, with a Kestrel 18m, a Libelle, and (from memory) an Astir CS on trailers. Stopped at Forbes for a bite of lunch at a small park beside the river. In the middle of the pool we stopped beside, there was a pile sticking up out of the water, maybe a dead tree. About 300 mm in diameter, about a metre above the water. A lone Pelican glided serenely in over our heads, flared, pulled the flaps fully out and extended the undercarriage and landed perfectly motionless on the pile. Tucked the wings away...

 

We all just sat there, until one of us said: 'bloody hell, and we think we can fly.' A true spot landing is one where the spot is (nearly) the same size as your feet...

 

Chuffs land by extending the gear ( when they remember to do that) and colliding with something stationary, such as Earth or a tree. Sulphur-Crested El Destructo machines land by aiming in the middle of the flock and ceasing to flap. Pigeons auto-rotate to smackdown. Wedgies land in the same way Chinooks do: converting forward motion into ground flattening force by application of brute force. Pelicans - for all they look like the aerial equivalent of a night of ill-advised passion between a winged hippo and a drag-line digger - land on the solid like a ballet-dancer completing a grand jete, or on the water like a hydrofoil settling after a small swell.

 

 

[facthunter]

They do it elegantly as if they know you are a poor flyer and are watching. Nev

 

 

[winsor68]

They do it elegantly as if they know you are a poor flyer and are watching. Nev

They aren't elegant eaters....

Pelican eats pigeon alive....

 

 

 

[pylon500]

That's inedible!, I mean incredible.

 

 

[facthunter]

Don't put human values on nature. They generally only kill to survive. That is the way of predation. We kill animals to eat as well. But we do it to other humans for control and power . Nev

 

 

[winsor68]

Don't put human values on nature. They generally only kill to survive. That is the way of predation. We kill animals to eat as well. But we do it to other humans for control and power . Nev

So do animals.