A team of engineers has designed a radical kind of airplane wing, assembled from hundreds of tiny identical pieces. The “digital morphing” wing can change shape to control the plane’s flight. The new assembly system, on the other hand, makes it possible to deform the whole wing, or parts of it. A conventional wing is a compromise that is not optimised for any of these stages, and therefore sacrifices efficiency, the researchers point out. A constantly deformable wing, however, could provide a much better approximation than a conventional wing of the best configuration for each stage.

Source: Indian Express April 01, 2019 19:07 UTC