Aviation Partners/FlexSys Morphing Wing Demonstrator

Aviation Week’s Rupa Haria took this video of a wing-morphing “flexfoil” demonstrator that winglet specialist Aviation Partners Inc. and joint-venture partner FlexSys displayed at the 2016 National Business Aviation Association show. The demo illustrates how the airfoil shape could change in flight to boost performance over a wide range of angles of attack, indicated airspeeds and Mach levels. The joint-venture partners are working with an undisclosed customer to retrofit an aircraft with the first commercial morphing wing, an aerodynamic innovation that has wide-ranging implications for performance-boosting retrofits of existing business jets or clean-sheet designs.