For the first time in aviation history, an aircraft has been manoeuvred in flight using supersonically blown air.
BAE say this process removes the need for complex movable flight control surfaces. In a series of ground-breaking flight trials that took place in the skies above north-west Wales, the MAGMA unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) demonstrated two innovative flow control technologies which could revolutionise future aircraft design.
MAGMA, designed and developed by researchers at The University of Manchester in collaboration with engineers from BAE Systems, successfully trialled the two ‘flap-free’ technologies earlier this month at the Llanbedr Airfield say the firm in a release.
“The technologies have been designed to improve the control and performance of aircraft. By replacing moving surfaces with a simpler ‘blown air’ solution, the trials have paved the way for engineers to create better performing aircraft that are lighter, more reliable and cheaper to operate. The technologies could also improve an aircraft’s stealth as they reduce the number of gaps and edges that currently make aircraft more observable on radar.
Developing such technologies helps to ensure the UK has the right technologies and skills in place for the future and could be applied to the development of a Future Combat Air System. It is the latest technological breakthrough to come from a number of BAE Systems collaborations with academia and industry, that will help the UK to deliver more advanced capability, more quickly, and through shared investment.”
Julia Sutcliffe, Chief Technologist, BAE Systems Air, said:
“MAGMA is a great example of how collaborating with bright minds at British universities can deliver ground-breaking research and innovation. Our partnership with The University of Manchester has identified cutting-edge technology, in this case flap-free flight, and turned what began as a feasibility study into a proven capability in just a number of months. It demonstrates how STEM can be applied in the real-world and I hope the success of these trials inspires the next generation of much-needed engineers and scientists.”
Bill Crowther, senior academic and leader of the MAGMA project at The University of Manchester, added:
“We are excited to have been part of a long-standing effort to change the way in which aircraft can be controlled, going all the way back to the invention of wing warping by the Wright brothers. It’s been a great project for students to be part of, highlighting that real innovation in engineering is more about finding practical solutions to many hundreds of small technical challenges than having single moments of inspiration.”
The technologies demonstrated in the trials were:
• Wing Circulation Control – Taking air from the aircraft engine and blowing it supersonically through narrow slots around a specially shaped wing tailing edge in order to control the aircraft.
• Fluidic Thrust Vectoring – Controlling the aircraft by blowing air jets inside the nozzle to deflect the exhaust jet and generate a control force.
The trials form part of a long-term collaboration between BAE Systems, academia and the UK government to explore and develop flap-free flight technologies, and the data will be used to inform future research programmes. Other technologies to improve aircraft performance are being explored in collaboration with NATO Science and Technology Organisation say BAE.
Looks good, what happens when the engine is out, I presume auxiliary pump and batteries?
The reason why it may be better suited to UAVs than manned aircraft.
Yes I was thinking the same thing and why I suspect this long considered technology is finally taking a leap forward into real time.
Technology is the key to our future prosperity and we should invest heavily in it.
Building RFA support ship at inflated prices in UK shipyards with little hope of any exports is not.
A good place to start investing and building then?
“Bombardier to sell Belfast operations”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-48130991
Does Bombardier in NI have a sustainable future?
Business is constantly changing and evolving.
Failure to change and evolve inevitably leads to failure.
@Nigel Collins And already two potential buyers are showing interest – GKN and Spirit Aerospace. As the report noted the factory in NI supplies other manufacturers apart from Bombardier. Not too sure where Airbus stands on this as I understood they had taken over the Bombardier C Series as the Airbus 200 family.
Difficult times for families in NI and my thoughts are with them and wish them a good result which I am sure will happen.
Agreed.
Can’t help but think that the two factors are not unrelated as prophesied by some at the time of the Bombadier/Airbus agreement to get around US sanctions. If it had a future before, one can’t help but think the convolutions of that deal, probably with a sprinkling of Brexit fears as an added complication, made Bombadier’s involvement in NI deeply problematic. It will be interesting to see where the work moves to. I can see us being further squeezed between Trump/EU manipulations.
well said sir – we are a nation of inventors who need the funding and backing to prosper – leave building blocks of steel plate to the Koreans
technology and innovation is our future – providing we dont sell it cheap to the US afterwards
we usually do, then spend triple the cost getting the technology back from them
We definitely need to invest in new industries of the future, it is not enough to just talk about it without actually ever setting up any British companies in any of these fields and supporting them.
We should set up and support a British company to design and build wind turbines, we in Britain need huge numbers of wind turbines, every single one of them bought from a foreign company. This is an industry of the future and we have precisely nothing in this field (the same as in practically every single other field). We should set up a large British company in this field, and support them, this would have the potential to be massive, a British rival to Siemens in this field.
Electric vehicles are the future, we should set up and support a large British company to design and build electric vehicles (cars, busses, vans, trucks, motorbikes, etc.) so that when this technology is commonplace we have a large British company in this field. This would also have the potential to be massive, a rival to the likes of Ford, VW, Toyota, etc.
Instead, what happens in Britain is they destroy our old industries and then talk about replacing them without ever actually setting up and supporting any large British companies in any of the fields like I have described, so in effect we end up with nothing of any note in old industries or new. Meanwhile the likes of Germany, Japan, France, etc. keep all of their old industries (car making, train making, steel making, ship building, etc.) AND get the new industries on top of that (electric vehicles, wind turbines, etc.).
It is not enough to say we want new industries in Britain without making sure we have some large, note worthy British companies in these fields.
And that is not to say we want our traditional industries neglected either. On the contrary, we also have to invest in them and support them the same as France, Germany, etc. It is not a case of either/or like some people mistakenly believe.
Agree that there is a bright future in tech for the UK if we grasp it. Perhaps a dragons den approach to funding would provide better value for public money rather than subsidies.
With regards to shipbuilding, you are correct, paying over the odds to make building a few RFAs in the possible is a poor use of funds.
However, if the national shipbuilding strategy had any sense, it would have focused on creating modern shipbuilding infrastructure, that could have made a commercially viable venture. Had this been done beginning with the Tide Class QEs & T45s, through the Rivers and then on to the T26 & FSS. A well thought out policy would have made commercial contracts viable through economies of scale.
Jobs for high technology are great, and are absolutely to be supported, but with the political will it needn’t be at the expense of other areas.
I’m not knocking their achievement, but! The bold statement made by BAE is not true: “For the first time in aviation history, an aircraft has been manoeuvred in flight using supersonically blown air.” They should look at their own past to discover this statement is rubbish i.e. the Harrier. Yes, the system only worked when the aircraft was in the hover but technically that is still classed as flight because the aircraft is not in contact with the ground. What they should have stated is that for the first time an aircraft has been controlled in forward flight using supersonically blown air.
Unfortunately this idea is not new as it’s a development of “blown flaps” that have been in use since the 1940’s. The first military production aircraft to use it was the Starfighter, due to its really tiny wings, which meant it had a very high landing speed. For us, the Buccaneer was the first practical aircraft to make use of the blown flap/slat. This increased its stall speed so made landing a lot easier on a carrier. The other infamous aircraft to use it was the TSR2. Again, because it used a small highly loaded wing for low level supersonic flight, its landing speed was very high. Using the blown flaps allowed the aircraft to land at a much lower and controllable (safer) speed.
The Hunting H126 was built to investigate the use of blown flaps, with air taken directly from its Orpheus engine. As the aircraft could fly so slowly, normal flight controls were useless, so the aircraft used blown air to control pitch, roll and yaw. When put into a headwind, the aircraft could practically hover.
The BAE/Machester Uni team have further developed this concept so that elevons are no longer required and thus rely on the blown air to control roll and using the exhaust flow direction to control pitch. Be interesting to see if they tried getting rid of the twin rudders and used the blown air to control yaw?
For a stealth aircraft the flying controls to airframe/wing gap is crucial. This is because the gap can either act as a corner reflector or a resonant cavity. If you have a look at the wing on a F35 the gap thickness for the leading edge flap and trailing edge elevons are tiny. This is to minimise any chance of reflectivity or cavity resonance. If you can design a wing that doesn’t use elevons, slats or flaps thus requiring gaps to allow for their freedom of movement, you have created a much stealthier wing. The trick will be to create sufficient blowing over the wing to cater for high angles of attack as well as being used for flight control. At present NASA are also investigating wing warping and inflight wing profile reshaping looking at achieving the same goal.
If the possible future Tempest aircraft used blown air flight controls instead of standard flying controls, the aircraft could be made much stealthier than its competitors.
There are reports that Taranis has some form of thrust vectoring in its exhaust based on a RR patent.
Blown flaps are a different thing than this. They still require external moving surfaces. This does not. Also Harrier is not the same either I am not sure the air was supersonic and it was not full control through the flight envelope.
Sorry to disagree, but you’re wrong. What BAE/Manchester have done is a further development of blown flaps, the theory behind it is not new. The phenomenon was well understood back in the 50’s after the H126 prototype trials which used blown air through its flight envelope up to 40 knots airspeed, where the conventional controls took over. By re-energising the airflow that had either gone stagnant or detached over the wing would regenerate lift. However, if the airflow over the wing was not balanced one side would develop more lift and thus induce a rolling moment and turn the aircraft. The Buccaneer when in RAF service had the blown flaps disconnected, because the valves would stick causing roll when coming in to land. This was especially pertinent during Gulf War 1 where the sand/dust jammed the valves from operating properly.
The Harrier uses a similar process to control attitude and heading “whilst hovering”. Air is taken from the cold air stage of the Pegagus, it is further compressed and discharged through controllable valves. The valves are linked to the the pedals and stick so that the pilot can control the aircraft’s heading and direction. Admittedly the Magma also generates lift be discharging the air over a curved surface, unlike the Harrier where the air is discharged directly to the atmosphere. So technically the system is like the Buccaneer’s but when one of the blown flaps valves is jammed.
You are confirming what I am saying… Blown flaps are conventional systems that have air injected in order to re-energise the airflow. It was simply a way of controlling airflow over surfaces at low speeds in order to maximise their effectiveness. The system in the article has no such conventional moving surfaces and uses air jets to manoeuvre the aircraft. They are different things that just both happen to use air jets.
You’re missing the point. The Hunting H126 project was used to investigate how blown air over flaps would help reduce the stall speed of a wing. What they also discovered was that at such low speeds the aircraft was capable of, conventional controls were no longer effective (it could fly as slow at 30 knots and even slower when facing a head wind). So someone decided to use some of the compressed air from the engine to change the aircraft’s attitude. They also discovered that the left and right wing blowing had to be proportional or else you’d generate a rolling moment. The H126 had a maximum forward speed of 90 knots. From above 40 knots the conventional flight controls came into play but were sloppy. Below that the aircraft was controlled using air jets.
Jump ahead some 60 years to the Magma flying wing. The test aircraft uses a combination of conventional elevon mixing, wing circulation and fluidic pitch control.
If you blast air from the trailing edge of a wing perpendicular to the wings travel you will only induce a yawing moment. To get the wing to roll you either have to increase or decrease the lift on the wing. There are a number of methods you could use to achieve this. By disrupting the boundary layer on one wing causing it to have less lift than the other, or you can deflect the wing by discharging a jet of air tangentially from the wings surface (which is less effective), or you could use jets protruding from the wing’s surface to direct discharged air either across the top or bottom of the wing. This reattaches the boundary layer causing lift and the rolling moment if its only done on one wing or via opposites. Additionally, much like they have used for the pitch control by using another air source to deflect the primary jet of air you could generate a rolling moment.
What I’m trying to say is that using discharged air to control the attitude of an aircraft is not new. The Magma aircraft is an evolution of boundary layer control that was used to help aircraft with small wings decrease their stalling speed.
The big problem with using discharged air to control the aircraft flight attitude is that it takes a lot of propulsive power away from pushing the aircraft. A portion of the discharged air can be added to the net thrust, but it will never add up to the engines total thrust.
In the video below you will see the Magma take-off using conventional elevons and then use boundary layer air control for the rest of the flight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okAC069Cahw
Look I don’t know the complexities here but I would presume the conventional control surfaces in that vid are predominantly as a safety factor while they investigate the complexities of the technology in the safer environment away from take off and landing? Rather line they used to test early turbojets on Lancs while retaining two of its ?Merlins.
As for Bae’s claim is Supersonic the key word here? I think all companies trend to muddy the waters in their claims but I suspect whatever the answer there is likely some aspect of the terms they use that do make it it distinct even if only marginally so. Clearly this process isn’t exactly unknown nor has been for half a century or so, so it’s uniqueness is probably in small specific areas that one can argue about endlessly. Little is totally new after all.
Another thought though, is it Boeing who are flying (or planning to) a UAV of this nature without any fins at all? I’m Interested in how it is controlled, a similar process perhaps. Anyone know? Will the control technology of the Magna eventually be able to alleviate these too I wonder.
Maybe a different process to achieve it but we finally seem to be achieving what Barnes Wallis desired and worked for back in the 50s.
I agree, I’m not knocking what the team have down, just the spin they’ve used by evolving existing tech.
A flying wing without some sought of tail is very difficult to control the phenomenon of dutch rolling. This is where the aircraft will roll around the aircraft’s longitudinal axis. The Horten 9 used a variation of wing profile and twist to minimise the problem, but it did not completely go away. The B2 uses active damping, where the flight control system automatically counters the rolling without the pilot’s input. It uses a combination of the split elevons, spoilers and differential thrust from the engines.
I would imagine that a further development of the Magma will try to remove the fins with active control taking over the yaw input. If the “supersonic” air is discharged perpendicular to the wing tips trailing edge it will induce a yaw moment. If this is integrated with pitch and roll in the right sequence they could control the dutch roll problem.
Modern radio controlled flying wings have been using active controls to prevent dutch rolling. They use a small digital gyro platform to measure the x, y, and z velocities then counteract it by mixing the flight controls to minimise the problem. So if it can be done with model planes, there should be no issue with the Magma doing the same.
Great news, hopefully we put in to use in a British U.A.V.
Whilst it’s a great achievement I would prefer this was kept quiet. We all know hacking takes place why advertise the subject and the targets.
lets just put every detail on the internet? after all the u.k media is a very specialised beast when it comes to disclosing matters on the nations security.
Didn`t the Buccaneer use blown air over the wings to assist low level high speed flight control ?
Blown air systems are just ways to keep airflow active over aerodynamic surfaces. This is different as there are no aerodynamic surfaces involved.
Cheers, thanks for the clarification
I imagine this tech would suit an aircraft with the SABRE engine, for Maneuvering in the upper atmosphere.
Yummy! 🙂
Could well be essential I suspect or all but.
I saw a small prototype of this concept in the Manchester Museum a few years ago. Before that date I watched a short report on the B.B.C. on this concept aircraft being flown after special permission had been obtained from the C.A.A. I am glad to see progress is being made so we can give it away to the French.
I wonder if this technology, along with lessons learned from Taranis, will be included in the design of Tempest which seems to be attracting future partnerships from both Leonardo, and now Saab?
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/leonardo-targets-role-on-uks-tempest-next-gen-fight-456692/
Well as I remember during the late 50s 60s Buccaneer and many other aircraft had “blown air wings”????
Also having been at RAF Wittering dyring thd late 60s I’m pretty sure the Harrier had a full 3-axis Blown Air Flight Control System albeit not Supersonic and in the hover.
Russian Aircraft developed thrust-vectoring and indeed many Helicopters employ it so this is all very interesting but not exactly new.
Also I am sure when I saw a TV bit from Manchester Uni re this project the model they showed definitely had moving control surfaces?? Are these just backup controls on this uav?