Aircraft Design, the Avian Way

After 100 years of perfecting aviation, we are once again looking to the birds for clues on developing the next generation of aircraft.  Dr. Fuh-Gwo Yuan at North Carolina State University is leading one such project, one of only a handful around the world.  Recently, he and his graduate students have studied the flight mechanics of various bird species for traits that might be of use in designing future aircraft.

Of course, Dr. Yuan is not the first to have looked to the avian world for inspiration.  "The Wright brothers were also inspired by how birds fly," he noted, pointing out how Orville and Wilbur's airplane featured bendable wing-tips to mimic a bird's outer feathers.  Leonardo Da Vinci studied birds for 20 years in sketching out his first flying machines.

Dr. Yuan began his research with a question: How is an eagle's flight so efficient, when its brain measures only one cubic inch?  This inspired him to seek a model coupling that elegant design with modern scientific capabilities.  (For video of a bald eagle in flight, click here)

Dr. Yuan's team is hard at work revising the design for their proposed model.  While an eagle has feathers that perform different functions, they are still part of one fluid whole.  The wings of a commercial jetliner are segmented pieces constructed to imitate those parts of an eagle's wing which provide drag upon landing.  This is the point Dr. Yuan stressed above all others.  "We don't mimic the form," he said.  "We borrow the function."

Similar projects have also been conducted at the University of Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, and the University of California at Berkeley, where researchers have been seeking to develop "Micromechanical Flying Insects" since 1998.

On paper, the idea of a new aircraft design sounds like it might revolutionize the aviation industry, or at the very least push it into the 21st century.  However, you won't be seeing futuristic jetliners any time soon.  If the short-term goal is to perfect the design, the long-term goal could see miniaturized versions navigating under their own power as reconnaissance drones for the military.

"We'd like to make the vehicles more autonomous," Dr. Yuan explained, describing a scenario in which a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) might navigate terrain without a human at the controls.  These planes could even find their way onto Mars as detachable surveyors on future missions.

For just over a century, humanity thought it had this flight thing all figured out.  As Dr. Yuan and his students are proving, understanding how a bird stays aloft and mimicking its design are two very different, very tricky things.  Within a year, we could very well have the answer to that riddle.