NASA Looks at Folding Wings to Increase Efficiency

The original idea, dropped in the 1960s, could be making a comeback. Articulating airfoils, or folding wings, are nothing new to aviation. They’ve been used for decades as an efficiency tool to help store multiple airplanes in a small space. But NASA thinks a new airfoil known as the Spanwise Adaptive Wing (SAW) could fold an aircraft’s wings in flight, creating huge efficiencies but without the use of traditional heavy mechanical actuators. (www.flyingmag.com) المزيد...