Flying At New Speeds: Discovering Optimal Wing Design For An Oblique Wing Search And Rescue Drone.

I have always been interested in the oblique wing theory for aviation. So, I was thinking of a way to incorporate it into something that would be helpful for people. I came to the idea of search and rescue, as it is a good application that can capitalize on the benefits of an oblique wing aircraft. One benefit of the oblique wing aircraft design, is the higher top speed and lower stall speed for pinpointing the location of the person or people in need of assistance.

The first step was to simulate three designs and find what works and what doesn't. To do this, I started by researching oblique wings and how they work to better understand the improvements this type of aircraft has over the standard model. Richard Vogt, a German engineer, had the first theory of an oblique wing, and later Robert T. Jones, a NASA aeronautical engineer, furthered the idea and became the primary creator of the first manned aircraft using the oblique wing theory. From my research I found that the main benefits of the oblique wing aircraft are up to two times the fuel efficiency at high speeds, as the rotated wing reduces drag (Mach 1). It also allows for longer flight duration due to lower drag and a higher speed range. This is because as the wing rotates straight, the aerodynamic behavior acts like a stable, controlled aircraft at low airspeed, making takeoff and landing smoother, before rotating into an oblique wing that behaves like a swept wing. I started testing with a streamlined design that had no vertical stabilizer, then made a second design with a full rear tail wing, and finally a third with some condition changes. For this experiment I used a web software called Machup 5, though it wasn't my first choice. I first tried Open VSP, but it lacked the right testing parameters for my experiment. I then downloaded Machup, but couldn't see what I was creating. Finally, I landed on Machup 5, a web-based CAD plane modeling and testing software. Currently I am working on developing the wing for the first prototype.

I did three variations in this experiment. The parameters were that the plane would be going at Mach 0.8 with an angle of attack of 5 degrees, except for the final model. The first model did not work because it was built on the wrong axis, making it have no lift; in fact, it was producing a lot of negative lift. After a lot of troubleshooting, I had the first real iteration, and at the start I was getting some gains in lift while maintaining a low stall speed. After I hit 30 degrees of rotation, the lift started to fall off. There was also a weird scaling issue when it reaches anything past 40 degrees. This is because, in this software, there is no way to truly create an oblique wing aircraft — I was only able to "fake" the oblique design by giving one wing sweep and the other wing negative sweep. The only issue with this is that the sweep makes the wing scale weirdly and changes the geometry. Therefore, in my second design, I added a vertical stabilizer and tried to fix the scaling issue by shortening the wings with each increment of sweep. This had poor results, although still better than the first design due to the vertical stabilizer. In the final design, I kept the vertical stabilizer, did not attempt to fix the scaling issue, and changed the simulation from an angle of attack of five degrees to zero degrees, as I suspected that may have been contributing to the problem. My findings are that the first design had a drop in lift from the first increment of 10 degrees, whereas all other tests showed gains in lift up until about 30 degrees. The third design performed by far the best, gaining lift until 40 degrees before dropping off, although none of them maintained lift increases all the way to 60 degrees.

The results of my project showed that the aircraft had small increases in efficiencies at about 30-40 decrease of sweep this is great as this tells me that this concept works even on a software that does not really support it this is also great for moving forward as this proves that my design will work and that I can continue to improve it And gain knowledge about this concept.

Next, I would like to create an actual model that I can test in a wind tunnel and eventually some day I would like to build it and fly it in real life. As well as much later down the line I would like to see my vision in use helping people as I have a lot of confidence in this design that it will be a great search ad rescue tool some day.

Big thanks to Sean Feener and Jen Parrott as well as the STEM Club for helping me complete this project. I also want to thank East Three Secondary School for giving me office space to be able to work on this every day in school.

Elsevier. (2016). Oblique wing aircraft design study. Chinese Journal of Aeronautics.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1000936116301820

Elsevier. (2016). Oblique wing aircraft figure.

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1000936116301820-gr1_lrg.jpg

A. Hama. (2020). Oblique wing aircraft (PDF).

https://ahama92.github.io/files/2020-02-24-post-oblique_wing/oblique-wing.pdf

NASA. (n.d.). AD-1 oblique wing aircraft.

https://www.nasa.gov/reference/ad-1/

Utah State University. (n.d.). MU-5 aircraft information.

http://aerotools.usu.edu/mu5/

Brain & Spinal Research Foundation. (n.d.). Helpful resources.

https://www.brstf.org/helpful-resources