NASA successfully tested the technology of changing the shape of the wing of the aircraft

^{NASA Photos}
The NASA research team successfully completed testing Adaptive Compliant Trailing Edge (ACTE) technology, which allows you to change the geometry of the aircraft wing. Engineers completed 22 flights in the past six months on a Gulfstream III jet plane, specially equipped for testing. The main benefit from the introduction of ACTE will be fuel savings : given that annually $ 212 billion is spent on aviation fuel annually, the savings from 4% to 12% turn out to be quite substantial.

The ACTE technology is developed by the FlexSys company, which came out of the academic environment at the University of Michigan. The very surface of such a wing is a completely seamless object, made primarily of aluminum, titanium, fiber-reinforced polymer composites and other materials used in the aviation industry. During the test, the angle of inclination of the plane of the wing consistently changed from -2 ° to 30 ° - and these figures are not the limits: just the engineers wanted to avoid unnecessary risks. The flexible part of the wing of the Gulfstream III has a length of 4.3 meters, and the slope itself is changed with the help of special drives.

NASA financed the development company with a sum of $ 40 million, however, experts estimate the timeframe for the introduction of technology into commercial operation at 6-10 years. In addition, an additional advantage of ACTE is that such flaps can be relatively easy to install on existing aircraft. Get a visual idea of ​​how the technology works on the video below: