Birds Teaching Us To Fly

On 22^nd November, Jorn Cheney gave a seminar on the morphing of bird wings, and how this may influence the design of future aircraft.

Cheney, began by reflecting on the current methods of flight, which use ‘brute force’ to account for the forces acting on the plane, rather than accounting for via complex mechanics, like birds do.

For example the F13 plane, which produces so much force that unless in flight, its engine must be cooled to prevent it from overheating.

This brute force mechanism, could be exchanged or subsidised with a more mechanically sound solution, inspired by the wing morphing of a bird.

Wing morphing, is when a bird changes the shape of its wing (angle, shape, inclination etc.) so as to be optimal to the conditions it is under, such as updrafts, gusts and crosswinds.

This is a very profitable method

It was calculated that an American personnel carrier, if its drag was reduced by only 1%, would save an approximate $140 million/ year in fuel. Now imagine if this was increased to 5%? $700 million/year. 10%? $1.4 billion/ year. 20%…

As such, Cheney studies how this can be done, with a main focus being on how the shape of the body and wings, affects the air currents surrounding the body in flight.

Using recordings of their test birds, they created a model predicting the movement of air currents, but this then needed to be tested.

He did this by creating tiny soap bubbles, using a mix of helium and standard air, so that they float steadily in the air, and recording birds flying through them.

It was really quite beautiful

Seeing the movement of the air, as the bird flew through the bubble cloud was amazing, and perfectly imaged the flow of air around the bird.

This was incredible, not only in the visualisation of the currents, but also in that it showed his model to be correct. Now to apply it to planes.

Using this information, he then moved on to discuss the function of a tail, which was really quite elusive, with the closest estimate they can make being that it assists in stability, by providing negative lift.

“Hitting that sweet spot can be hard”

He said, which is why flying in gusts and windy conditions is so hard. In order to account for the massively offsetting winds that would destroy a conventional plane, birds simply angle their wings in order to reject the wind.

This is largely thanks to their having a shoulder, which begs the question could this benefit an aeroplane? The answer is (theoretically) yes, if planes had a hinged wing that can adjust itself based upon the wind, then it could likely save not only millions of dollars in fuel, but also save the discomfort of flight turbulence.

I found this seminar fascinating

Not only working hands on with animals, but also in studying the biomechanics of flight and the forces involved, and although I do believe there is years of research yet to be done, to make this truly applicable to everyday plane flight, it is definitely very good and very interesting work, that I would happily be involved in, should I progress down the field of ornithology.

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Lukas Edwards, 14th February 2020