Flying and mysteries still unknown

Even experts have to admit that there are many things that people do not understand about flight, and that is why animals are much better than our best aircraft.

The mystery has no answer to the flying ability of animals

For example: A Blackbird jet flew at nearly 2,000 miles per hour passing 32 times its body length per second, but at the same time, a normal pigeon could fly over 75 times. long body.

The rotational speed of an A-4 Skyhawk is about 720 degrees per second, compared to the roll speed of 5,000 degrees of terns. Some military aircraft can withstand gravity from 8 to 10 G (earth gravity is 1G). Many bird species have greater gravity than 10G and can reach 14G.

If talking about flexibility and efficiency in the air, birds, bats and insects easily defeat the aircraft. Researchers hope that understanding more detailed animals will one day reveal secrets about their flight capabilities .

Imitate animals

Nearly all animals in the air flapped their wings to fly. When people first dream of taking themselves off the ground, many people have a natural idea of ​​imitating birds and creating flapping wings.

In the 13th century, philosopher - Francis priest Roger Bacon proposed the idea of ​​an engine flapping wings, and in the 15th century, Leonardo DaVinci sketched flying engines with flapping wings. But the first attempts to fly like animals failed. With a vehicle carrying a person's weight, the flap speed needs to create the necessary lift, and it is an insurmountable obstacle.

It was not until people tried to use fixed wings, and according to the much simpler aerodynamic principle, people actually removed themselves from the ground.

The first human flights involved gliders, and the most famous was a steamship in 1852 .

In 1903, the Wright brothers made the first, motor-powered manned flight, using a system of fixed wings on the fuselage. Since their success, most people carrying aircraft follow the fixed wing principle.

" Because the flapping of natural wings is complicated, it is very difficult to imitate," said Sergey Shkarayev, an aerospace professor at the University of Arizona.

" People realize that it is much easier to deal with fixed wings, just like birds do when they're gliding. But you still need a propulsion. Birds don't have wheels, there's no propulsion either. who came up with a combination of a propulsion and a fixed wing, and that's why the Wright brothers succeeded. "

People are far from understanding the complicated and sophisticated flight mechanism of animals.(Photo: LiveScience)

Tiny aircraft

Although the Boeing 747 serves us very well, it is not no longer limited to such fixed-wing aircraft . "With flapping wings, we envision them to be more advantageous than fixed wings, such as the ability to swing sharply like hummingbirds," Shkarayev said.

The flap also allows organisms to float in one position, fly at extremely low speeds and react more flexibly to changes in environmental conditions such as wind, rain and snow. These versatile abilities allow birds and insects to fly even when the wings are broken.

Shkarayev has designed mini planes with flapping wings, with wingspan of just over ten centimeters and can be controlled automatically. These aircraft were searched by the military and could have commercial and scientific applications.

To create a better engine, Shkarayev took pictures of birds and designed computer models to understand their aerodynamics . He found that when birds and insects fly, they change the wing shape continuously to accommodate environmental conditions. But the physical principle of these changes is complex.

"This versatility is desirable," he said.

Peter Ifju, a professor of mechanical and aircraft engines at the University of Florida, said that "there is still a long way from being able to answer some of the big questions about animal flight. What do animals do in the air so that they can create such lift effectively? We can see what they are doing, but don't understand how they interact with the air. "

At a primitive level, he said, birds swim in the air like people swim in water. When swimming, we push the water away to create thrust forward and lift, while trying to create as little resistance as possible. "Birds have a similar treatment," he said.

Animals always have an advantage over machines, such as the ability to use the nervous system to assess subtle changes in the environment and adjust flight activity accordingly.

"We not only try to copy naturally, there are things that nature does, we simply can't do it. We just try to understand nature, and apply it to mechanical engineering," one expert said. Gia said.