Free Republic

EDWARDS AFB - Engineers at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center are testing extremely small sensors - about the diameter of a human hair - to monitor changes in an airplane wing's shape during flight, hoping to harness the information to improve aircraft efficiency and safety by controlling the changes. "We want to be able to change the shape of a wing," said Lance Richards, Dryden's Advanced Structures and Measurement group lead. "The first step in changing the shape of a wing is knowing the shape." The fiber-optic sensors, unlike traditional sensors and strain gauges, are extremely lightweight and are small...