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ambience: Airplane in Flight, Airport
If you want to design a fast, versatile aircraft, what better sources of inspiration than a falcon or a shark? I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
“The reason that we look at animals that swim in water as well as animals that fly in the air is because air and water are both fluids. And they’re related, with certain parameters.”
Barry Lazos an aeronautics engineer at Langley Research Center.
“Air is less dense than water is, meaning that you can push something through air a lot easier than you can push something through water. So we use those parameters and calculate what the size and shape of an object should be so that it will work best in air or in water. And if something works good in water, we can adjust the way it’s shaped or the size of it, in order to make it work good in air.”
But the shape of an object is only one consideration. Barry Lazos says that the next aeronautics innovations might come from new materials.
“Beyond just studying the aerodynamics of birds, or looking at how fish swim, we have to consider what kind of materials might be used to construct a vehicle that would perform the same types of functions that birds and fish do. You might notice that birds and fish aren’t rigid at all — they’re very pliable and flexible. And the materials that we have now: aluminum and steel — they’re rather rigid. So what we need to do is develop materials that have strength enough to support a vehicle as it flies, but are flexible and adaptable enough so that they can perform the shape changes that we’re interested in them performing.”
Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation with additional support from NASA. I’m Jim Metzner
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