jueves, 7 de marzo de 2013

Patents - Variable-Geometry Airbuses




Airbus has been granted US patents for two configurations that tackle one of the fundamental limitations of most aircraft designs – the wing is fixed to the fuselage. Other than variable-geometry, or swing-wing, designs where the objective is to combine the lower high-speed drag of a swept wing with the higher low-speed lift of an unswept wing, there might not seem much advantage to a moveable wing. Not so, it seems.

In  the first configuration (US patent 8,360,357 B2, filed in 2010), the wing is movable longitudinally along the aircraft
In the second configuration (US patent 8,336,811 B2, filed in 2010), the wing, tail and engines are combined into something Airbus calls the "aero-propulsive unit", which is mounted above the fuselage and attached via a system of rods.


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