NASA and Boeing test longer, narrower wings for more efficient flying
Long, narrow wings are intended to reduce fuel consumption and increase comfort in aircraft. However, wing flutter must be eliminated for this to happen.
NASA and Boeing are testing the effects of longer and narrower wings using a half aircraft model in a wind tunnel.
(Image: NASA/Mark Knopp)
The US space agency NASA and the aircraft manufacturer Boeing are jointly looking for a solution to make flying with passenger aircraft more efficient and comfortable. As part of the “Integrated Adaptive Wing Technology Maturation” project, they are testing longer, slimmer wings. These are intended to ensure that future passenger aircraft consume less fuel and fly more quietly at the same time.
As part of the collaboration, NASA and Boeing have conducted wind tunnel tests on wings that have a higher aspect ratio and are narrower. Longer and thinner wings have lower drag with roughly the same lift, making them more efficient overall in flight.
Preventing wing flutter
At the same time, however, the narrower wings can cause new problems: due to the high aspect ratio, they become more flexible. This can lead to greater movements within the wing structure during flight. The wings can deform, for example, and tend towards the notorious wing flutter. The aircraft can thus begin to vibrate and shake in gusty winds, leading to a rougher flight and stressing the airframe.
“Flutter is a very violent interaction,” says Jennifer Pinkerton, aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “When the airflow over a wing interacts with the aircraft structure and excites the natural frequencies of the wing, the wing oscillations are amplified and can grow exponentially, leading to a potentially catastrophic failure. Part of our testing involves characterizing aeroelastic instabilities like flutter for aircraft concepts so that these instabilities can be safely avoided in actual flight.”
To minimize wing flutter, NASA and Boeing are working to mitigate the effects of wind gusts on aircraft by reducing wing loads through aircraft movements. For their investigations, the engineers used NASA Langley's Transonic Tunnel, which, with a height and width of 4.87 m, is large enough to test a halved, large-format passenger aircraft model.
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A model with a wing approximately 3.96 m long is being used, which NASA developed together with Boeing and NextGen Aeronautics. The model is equipped with a total of ten movable control surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing. These allow the airflow to be controlled and the forces acting on the wings and causing them to vibrate to be reduced.
The engineers monitored both the forces acting on the aircraft model and the aircraft's reactions using sensors and measuring instruments. The new wing with its ten control surfaces is a further advancement compared to the wing that NASA and Boeing had already developed in an earlier cooperation called Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR). The SUGAR wing created at that time had only two active control surfaces. The new design with ten control surfaces is more complex but achieves the control objectives even better.
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The results from test series in 2024 and 2025, as well as the resulting computer simulations, were incorporated into the development of the new wing with the extended control configurations. The tests indicate that the forces in gusty winds could be reduced by the additional control surfaces and flutter decreased noticeably.
NASA and Boeing intend to further analyze the data obtained and publish the results. These could then be used in the development of the next generation of passenger aircraft to reduce their fuel consumption and allow them to fly more quietly.
(olb)
