Yes, that’s right! We engineers have a lot to learn from nature, and this isn’t the first time that we do so. The San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is on it, and they are studying all kinds of bird feathers apparently, 3D printing model prototypes and studying the exact role of the barbs, vanes, humerus, and barbules in the capturing of air and the generation of lift. Once they wrap their heads around this entirely, they could potentially design and manufacture aerospace parts that will help us achieve more energy efficient flight. What do you make of this? Any other nature-stemming engineering that you care to share? I think its overly fascinating when these two connect.

 

This is a very interesting article. I was reading it with full concentration so that I do not miss anything, I guess I am going to look up the paper “Scaling of bird wings and feathers for efficient flight.”

I really wonder what it has to do with adhesives. Also, what was fascinating is that the barbules spacing is constant in all birds.

 

Sounds a lot like Icarus to me:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus

Joking aside, I have mentioned this before. As a race we tend to over complicate things "because we can". In reality I think we just need to look back in time and also study nature more - we can effectively jump millions of years of evolution and the answers are often straight in front of our faces.

Check out this very interesting article from Bloomberg on the matter - I think it is called Biomimicry:-

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/phot...mart-inventions-inspired-by-nature-biomimicry

 

That's really cool how they might be able to make some kind of material that can open up but then merge back together like a feather does when you smooth it over.

There's some great Biomimicry designs out there (Velcro is a really common example).

I like this one (maybe not technically biomimicry but it looks cool) -

 

Also the inboard wing design of the airbus A380 was designed from the wing design of an eagle. If you notice carefully the A380 has a specific curve at the inboard end of the wing this actually provides much more lift by pushing the air downwards. This makes it possible for the wings to be shorter. However, this does cause the airplane wing to take on more parasite drag but an airplane this big didn’t have any other way to make the wing shorter and also the structure of the wing would be heavier, longer and unsafe for other international airport if this was not applied. Therefore, they applied the eagle wing design. One more importance of this is forcing the vortices down makes the horizontal stabilizer at the tail of the airplane safe from vortices caused by the wing. Unless the wing is stalling, when the wing is stalling the vortices hit the vertical stabilizers and it makes the elevators shake, in other words it’s called the stick shaker and warns pilots about the incoming danger of a stall.

The A380, B787 and A350XWB, they are all design marvels.

 

I flew on an A380 fairly recently and what blew my mind was... how do they make and fly the first prototype?
I mean, surely the entire design is basically theoretical until the first one flies. So they make the entire thing, costing millions, then it might not even work!

 

Well, they actually do test them on fluid mechanics software, and then on the wind tunnel. Some models had thousands of hours getting simulated on software tools. This gives you a pretty solid idea nowadays, so flying it will usually bring just some optimization on that part. Not fundamental changes. After the fluid mechanics simulations and the wind tunnel tests that determine the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft, then comes the flight simulation, having pilots fly it on the simulator. This brings further optimizations, so only then it goes "real" with test flight pilots.

 

Ahah, so they basically make the entire thing in CAD and then simulate flying it?

I wonder how you actually start with something like that. Do you think they start with a general external shape, then adjust it to actually break it up into buildable parts, add additional systems etc.

 

Well, some models are based/derive from a previous one, but some are designed from scratch. There is a set of airworthiness regulations that are applicable on the aircraft design, setting a broad context on which to work. Then designers consider the role/purpose, the cost, the safety, etc., but in general, I would bet that they start with the fuselage and then make changes again and again and again. To be realistic, there are teams of designers undertaking the design of each part, like the wings, the gear compartment, the nose and cockpit, this, that. All of them collaborate and stay on the same page, as one change affects the other, so you get the idea. Now, all that said, I have a hot piece of news to share with you, even concerning Airbus: https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/22/...campaign=Feed:+venturebeat/SZYF+(VentureBeat)

 

Aircraft designing is a very iterative process. Firstly the conceptual design is done based on customer requirements and this is done by one team of engineers. After that the preliminary calculations are also done by the same set of engineers. Sometimes these things are even outsourced to universities where students come up with unique designs and results.

Then when the basic layout is done. The company makes teams and starts the iterative process of engineering. The first component to be fixed is the wing and torque box from the preliminary design, then the tail the fuselage and lastly the landing gear. The tail includes the horizontal and vertical stabilizers etc. The landing gear placement is always the hardest because it always has too many design restrictions.

Then they start with designing the flaps slats control surfaces etc. after this they iterate on the designing until they reach a good output. Every component has a structural design, structural analyst, aerodynamic analyst team, or more depending on the project size.

Then they build model, test, fail and iterate on the design again. Until everything seems to work. The team that’s working parallel to these teams but totally outside the loop is the controls team. They design everything by themselves. The only places where they share their input is the control surface sizing and wing and tail sizing and the total weight of the avionics.