Airbus is stepping up testing of radical new wing technology as the planemaker lays the foundation for a future successor to its best-selling A320 series. The company focuses on longer, lighter, slender wings featuring folding wingtips to fly more sustainably. But it faces a battle to bring down costs that would make the technologies profitable and competitive with conventional aluminum wings on current commercial aircraft.
At the heart of this technology race is composite materials. These lighter, thinner materials can reduce weight — and the energy required to power aircraft up to high altitudes. They also provide an opportunity to design wings with more efficient tapering, which cuts drag and improves the aircraft’s aerodynamic efficiency. But composites are typically more expensive than aluminum, and the cost gap has slowed progress.
A new wing design being tested at Airbus’s plant in Filton, southwest England, is designed to be longer and feature a foldable tip like Boeing (BA.N). This will allow the wings to expand and contract during flight to smooth out the lift from the airframe and help it stay in the same position relative to the airflow.
Wings of this type also offer an opportunity to pack more systems into the wing and eliminate the need for engineers to work inside fuel tanks. This could lead to more reliability and simpler systems, which are crucial factors in the price of any new airplane. But the broad span of the wing will limit the ability to fit some critical flight-control systems, which may need to be relocated to the fuselage or other locations.
Other tests examine ways to dynamically change the shape and surface of the wings during flight, similar to how birds soar. This could improve the aircraft’s aerodynamic efficiency by smoothing out the lift coming from the wing in response to variations in the wind and cutting down on the fuel needed to fly.
The testing at the plant is part of the Airbus UpNext subsidiary, which is focused on fast-tracking future technologies by building demonstrators at speed and scale to evaluate and mature them. It will use the new wing technology to create a demonstrator showing how wings can be designed and built with greater efficiency and accelerated manufacturing times.
British Industry Minister Nusrat Ghani inaugurated the facility on Tuesday, saying it will secure more high-skilled jobs and strengthen the UK’s world-class aerospace research capability. It will help the industry develop ultra-efficient aircraft wings, engines, and sensors to deliver lower carbon emissions and better fuel economy. This is part of the government’s Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) Programme, which has a budget of PS685 million between 2022 and 2025. Both the government and industry fund the program.
