Over the past couple of weeks we’ve
had a look at how they’re kicking the pilot out of
a lot of what is to come. To wrap things up, let’s
see what IS in store for the rest of aircraft design in general.
Many new design theories are challenging traditional configurations,
and they, complimented by new materials and construction
techniques, are dictating that the aircraft of the near future
will look very much different than your grandfather’s
ride.
In a word; Computers. They and the software associated with
them, have advanced so rapidly that powerful aircraft design
programs, which might have cost upwards of hundreds of thousands
of dollars a decade or so ago, are cropping up on the personal
computers of amateur designers and dreamers worldwide.
No longer are years, advanced degrees and thousands of draftsmen
required to turn out a new aircraft design. No longer do
complex company infrastructures, dozens of designers, refrigerated
computer banks and complex wind tunnel installations hum
along to the dictates management.
Now, much more often than not, new aircraft are hatched
by entrepreneurial visionaries. Utilizing a single PC
loaded with an inexpensive design program or two, they
are creating these aircraft literally in days rather
than years. Thumb through the pages of ‘The Kitplanes Buyers Guide’ (www.Kitplanes.com),
reflect on their motto, “Dream it, Build it, Fly it” consider
the 300 plus kit plane designs available and you’ll
understand that it no longer requires the massive aircraft
manufacturing facilities of the past to bring an aircraft
to life and to market.
On the scale of airliners, cargo planes
and military aircraft, this rapid advance of computer technology,
provides the industry tools unimaginable a few decades ago.
Now it’s possible to make one small change, reiterate
the complete design, and investigate the change as it impacts
the whole.
“A CG problem? Move the wing and inch? No
problem. Does that solve the problem? Yes, and now we can
reduce the size of the empennage also.” This is a common
scenario in the development of an aircraft design; now accomplished
in minutes, rather than weeks, or months.
All aircraft designs
are living things. The design is begun and continues to change
right up to the day it is declared ‘frozen for production’.
The ability to keep the progress of a design, abreast of
the imagination of the designer, is the most significant
advantage of these new computer programs.
As importantly,
these powerful programs allow the designer unfettered latitude
in the investigation of new ideas. The designer now has the
ability to ‘fly’ a new concept within the design
program itself, and to test its feasibility, on the very
day of its conception. Reference the incredible ability of
Austin Meyer’s computer program ‘X-Plane 9.20’ (www.x-plane.com).
This program will shocked you at how powerful it is, and
leave you incredulous with it’s $39 price tag.
Needless
to say, aviation is experiencing a boom in new aircraft designs.
Tiny nano structured UAV’s fly through towns, up staircases,
down hallways, attach themselves to light fixtures and send
video and voice half way around the world.
| Robert Wood’s 60 mg, 3 cm
wingspan micro aerial vehicle |
Enormous blended wing, thousand passenger airliners will
soon ply the airways and make travel that much more comfortable
and affordable. New designs and materials will bring us the
space concepts of science fiction.
We mentioned new construction techniques and materials
earlier in this muse. Thanks to similar advances in the
abilities of computers to analyze the structures of metals
and composites, they too are advancing at a rate paralleling
that of design. Metal forming and mating techniques are
giving us advances like hydro formed components. Mating
systems like stir welding are speeding construction times.
The fields of chemistry and physics provide us with concepts
such as nano tubes; incredible carbon structures exhibiting
strength several hundred times that of the highest strength
steels. The fertile minds of designers and dreamers alike
will find materials and techniques enough to bring their
imaginations into reality, advancing our betterment, hopefully.
So we venture into ‘the brave new worlds’ of
aviation, into ‘2001’, and into‘2010’,
always well behind the minds of our science fiction writers,
but always well ahead of our sociology. I for one am fascinated
nearly every day with the introduction of new designs, new
techniques and new materials, developed primarily on the
coattails of computer soft and hardware advances. We are
none of us prepared for what we will witness in the next
couple of decades.
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