Wing warping after the Wrights

After over a hundred years of flight we are further in knowledge of what works and what doesn’t but on the other further away from knowing our full potential in travelling through air.

I personally would not say wing warping was flawed but I would say it was part of the evolution of flight controls !Ok for experimental purposes – especially at bicycle speeds in the early days – but I have read some very negative reports of the handling qualities of some wing warping equipped machines.(and also of some aileron equipped machines – but they were perhaps easier to improve !)
Ailerons were a much more practical solution and I would imagine that riggers breathed a sigh of relief when they became fashionable : ),And they have stood the test of time !

rgds baz

Got it, thanks. Who knew you could do a thesis flying model airplanes?

Yes, I know that wing warping became doomed as speeds and flight forces increased. But there is a widespread misconception that wing warping was flawed from the beginning, and that ailerons quickly proved superior. That’s what I was trying to correct.

Jim

Here is a link to the article BB

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuknowledge.uky.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1019%26context%3Dme_etds&ei=0Oi9UuKnEfLQ7AbTsIH4BQ&usg=AFQjCNEmrIm7TNnlYqEH0H3psJdg8BItgQ&sig2=NeAHtwGr8iPyqjQ0IsJt4g

If that does not work then google

DESIGN AND FLIGHT TESTING OF A WARPING WING FOR AUTONOMOUS FLIGHT CONTROL

That should hopefully lead to a University of Kentucky PDF,Page 4 refers

rgds baz

Will have a look BB,even if wing warping had survived until the 30’s – it would have been finished off by metal wings anyway.
Even into the jet age some a/c suffered from high speed aileron reversal because of insufficient torsional strength and hence ‘twisting’ of the wing structure !
Yes I think Doepke was using a little poetic licence/laziness by using the word ‘Decade’ but he was not that far off in terms of the majority of designs during WW1 !

rgds baz

Have you got a reference for the Edward B Doepke article? I don’t know why he would say “a decade after the Wrights’ first flight, wing warping was gone and the hinged aileron had taken its place.” At the end of 1913 the Deperdussin had just won the Gordon Bennett Trophy at 124 mph and the Sopwith Schneider still had it’s famous race ahead of it. Not to mention the early WWI wing warpers still being produced well into 1915. But allowing some wiggle room for the word “decade” I suppose he’s about right.

I’m sure it’s true that eventually speed and maneuverability at higher speeds required stiffer wings and wing warping was finished. It would be interesting if any early designers left notes on their decisions to switch to ailerons and what difference it made in a plane like the Sopwith Tabloid, which was produced and flown extensively both ways.

Yes, I have heard that with new materials there is some experimental interest in wing warping, or “wing morphing” as they say, which might be a little different.

Jim

Don’t forget the experimental Mission Adaptive Wing demo by NASA in the late 1980’s on an F111. Given the requirements for minimum aero impact and minimum impact on Radar cross section we could see more of this in the future.

Flutter and aeroelasticity became big problems at higher speeds….from an article by Edward B Doepke

Despite that wing warping was the final piece of the puzzle for controlled flight, a decade
after the Wrights’ first flight, wing warping was gone and the hinged aileron had taken its place.
As aircraft increased in speed, the low torsional stiffness needed for twisting the wings caused
complications with aeroelasticity leading to flutter [14]. Interest has progressively turned back
to warping with potential benefits in actuation energy efficiency, reduced drag, and increased
maneuverability.

Stability/control/aircraft design were all in their infancy and low and High speed aileron reversal were fun to learn about !

Interestingly – the history of ailerons goes back to circa 1864

Matthew Piers Watt Boulton (1820-1894)

One of his many publications appears to concern the subject of aeronautics. Entitled “On aerial locomotion,” the document was published in 1864, four years before Boulton received his aileron patent. It is within this publication that Boulton probably first coined the term aileron, meaning “little wing,” and described how such a device could be used to perform the function to which the modern aileron was later applied by Frenchman Henry Farman.
1868 He patented a system of lateral flight control involving what would later be called ailerons

Interesting comments. I have not seen any good, documented analysis of the subject. Bleriots started having wing failures when power increased, but by strengthening spars and increasing the number of bracing wires the problem was solved while retaining the wing warping, and eventually Pegoud and others were able to perform aerobatics with them.

I think it is true that early ailerons caused a lot of drag. That was certainly true of the separate ailerons like Curtiss used, as Frank Tallman tells us in his book. Maybe that’s why wing-warpers dominated early racing. Many early designers thought it was best to put the most aileron area at the wing tips where it was supposed to have the greatest effect on roll. They didn’t know about wing tip vortices. They were creating the greatest deflection precisely where it would cause the greatest drag and adverse yaw. You see this on Nieuport and Albatross designs, for example. The worst was the early Antoinettes, with ailerons hanging off the trailing edges. No wonder Levavasseur switched to wing warping. Actually several early designers switched from some type of aileron to wing warping. Some people say that early ailerons on light wing structures caused a trim tab effect and twisted the wing the opposite way, causing reversal.

I wonder what the effect was when, for example, Sopwith switched from wing warping to ailerons on the Tabloid. Did it make the Tabloid a better airplane? Had they stiffened the wing structure so that it didn’t warp easily anymore? I’ve always assumed that as speeds increased and combat required sudden control movements that structures had to be stiffened, and then ailerons were the only solution. But then, the Deperdussin was doing 124 mph and used wing warping.

What seems clear is that wing-warping was fully competitive with ailerons in the early days. Just how that changed is something that is easy to speculate about, but not so easy to find documented evidence about.

Jim

At low speeds the warping works better as it is just changing the angle of attack of the wing without adding the significant drag penalty of early ailerons. The ailerons that eventually replaced the wing warping on most aircraft were not at a good stage of development, that took another ten or fifteen years and another war, just look at the amount of aeroplanes (Tiger Moths being one) where you are advised to ‘lead with the rudder’ rather than roll into a turn as the assymetric drag of the aileron will cause the upgoing wing to, in fact, drop. The reason that these, relatively crude, ailerons replaced warping was that warping requires a flexible wing and, as speeds increase, the centre of pressure on the wing will move backwards, trying to twist the wing. If you make your wing stiffer with crude ailerons the benefits of the (arguably) less effective control is that higher speeds are possible without twisting the wings. It was higher than desirable diving speeds on monoplanes with flexible wings (be they aileron or warping is not important) that caused wing breakages and the ‘monoplane ban’ in the RFC. Incidentally, I have heard it said that the Morane G replica (with the 80hp Le Rhone) that has flown at La Ferte Alais for many years (not the Rotec engined one that crossed the Med in the summer) actually handles more like a modern light aeroplane rather than a 100 year old design.