Airbus has revealed a new conceptual aircraft design known as ‘Bird of Prey’, intended to inspire the next generation of aeronautical engineers.
The hybrid-electric turbo propeller plane takes design cues from eagles and falcons, featuring individually controlled feathers on the wings and tail for precision flight control. Its body also includes a blended wing to fuselage joint that mimics the sweeping aerodynamic arch of predatory birds. Unveiled at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford, the aircraft’s primary goal is to encourage young people into aerospace but also marks the 50th anniversary of Airbus.
“Bird of Prey is designed to be an inspiration to young people and create a ‘wow’ factor that will help them consider an exciting career in the UK’s crucially-important aerospace sector,” said Martin Aston, senior manager at Airbus.
“One of the priorities for the entire industry is how to make aviation more sustainable – making flying cleaner, greener and quieter than ever before. We know from our work on the Airbus A350 passenger jet that biomimicry, literally learning from the genetics of animals, that nature has some of the best lessons we can learn about design.”
Although the design is not meant to represent an actual aircraft concept, it is grounded in reality and based on either existing or emerging aerospace technologies. The Bird of Prey initiative is backed by the GREAT Britain campaign, Royal Aeronautical Society, Air League, Institution of Engineering and Technology and Aerospace Technology Institute.
“Birds in flight have captured the imagination for centuries,” said Sir Brian Burridge, chief executive of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
“The very first engineers looked to nature to work out how to emulate flight, and now the Airbus Bird of Prey concept will play an important role in inspiring the engineers of tomorrow. It is essential that we spark fascination and excitement in the coming generations to attract them towards pioneering sustainable advances for the future of aviation.”
and forgot that it is the lazy birds who are the most able flyers! Mankind’s earliest designs used ‘flapping’ wings -quite useless! I had a boss in the USA in the 70s who believed that had we copied the lazy birds first, we would be years ahead in aviation!
Don’t fly over grouse moor you might get shot down
We generally have tried to mimic nature for thousands of years. It is only recently that we have the computing power and material science to avoid spending millions of years of evolution. This is the best way join the sometimes disparate disciplines of engineering simplicity and artistic design.
I’ve just noticed this article and immediately felt unsettled by the image – I am no aerodynamicist but I hope my faculty for critical thinking is not too awry . I am all for biomimetics as appropriate but scaling/Reynolds number immediately springs to mind – the aircraft fuselage is sleek implying high speed but the wing form, with the equivalent of slotted primary feathers are reminiscent of passive soaring birds of prey such as condors and buzzards who are searching for thermals and fly very slowly to scan for prey , so how slow is this a/c meant to be? – other high endurance/long range birds such as the albatross have very different plan forms (similar to the current crop of airliners?) . Similarly the high wing and ‘ aerodynamic arch’ – on a bird it is a consequence of its flapping mechanisms – but on a fixed wing it seems superfluous and implies a structural penalty . My minds eye imagines all sorts of complex vortex interactions between the winglets and at the root arches . I am also wary of the language used in this article – its not an actual a/c concept, but an inspirational one? so a marketing icon to attract young engineers? but still grounded in reality – would this be a trick question ? Airbus, the RAeS etc know their subject matter so I stand to be educated.