Boeing Engineers Shatter Guinness Paper Airplane Record

[iNow]

Found this pretty cool. Thought some here might react similarly. 

 

“Boeing engineers’ handmade airplane shatters a record by flying nearly the length of an American football field.

<…>

Their design was inspired by hypersonic aerospace vehicles and they practiced for four months before making their attempt. <…>

“We tried to mimic the design of various hypersonic vehicles, which travel at speeds over Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound). So, we decided to call our plane Mach 5,” Ruble said.
<…>
Ruble and Jensen studied origami and aerodynamics for months, putting in 400 to 500 hours of creating different prototypes to try to design a plane that could fly higher and longer.

<…>
We found the optimal angle is about 40 degrees off the ground. Once you’re aiming that high, you throw as hard as possible. That gives us our best distance,” Jensen said. “It took simulations to figure that out.“

 

Video at the link: https://onfirstup.com/boeing/BNN/articles/duo-s-paper-airplane-seizes-guinness-world-records-status-1?bypass_deeplink=true

[MigL]

Interesting.
I would have thought you'd get the best range from a glider design, with very high aspect ratio wings ( ratio of span to chord ), which would allow for low loss of altitude with distance.
I would have never thought a hypersonic design to be capable of sustaining the needed lift.

PS    I'm sure Airbus can do better 😀 .

Edited March 5, 2023 by MigL

[iNow]

Lol. Boeing shade. 

Meanwhile Raytheon is sitting in the corner sending paper airplanes into orbit, but it’s top secret 

[J.C.MacSwell]

12 hours ago, MigL said:

Interesting.
I would have thought you'd get the best range from a glider design, with very high aspect ratio wings ( ratio of span to chord ), which would allow for low loss of altitude with distance.
I would have never thought a hypersonic design to be capable of sustaining the needed lift.

PS    I'm sure Airbus can do better 😀 .

I think it comes down to how much lift is actually needed, and more about the drag, or drag to weight (though weight would affect the lift requirement). Baseballs have been thrown significantly further.

A low aspect ratio shape of the same scale would likely have less drag, especially given the range of Reynold's numbers involved and the fact that the low aspect would yield an effectively higher Reynold's number.

 

Interestingly with regard to the war in Ukraine, this subject would reflect on the use of the wings being added to bombs to increase their range, the weight, scale and speeds involved affecting the designs.

Another thought is that higher aspect wings would require more drag at the tail to control any yaw and for directional stability. Something lower aspect or swept designs do more inherently.

Edited March 5, 2023 by J.C.MacSwell

[npts2020]

12 hours ago, MigL said:

I would have thought you'd get the best range from a glider design, with very high aspect ratio wings ( ratio of span to chord ), which would allow for low loss of altitude with distance.

It seems like they are using single sheets of paper, so it may come down to how fast you can accelerate the plane without collapsing or severely vibrating the wings, creating drag. OTOH if you are going for MTA (maximum time aloft), my money is on the glider. I know for discs, there is a big difference between ones thrown for distance (WR just over 1100 ft ~336 m) and ones thrown for MTA (WR 16.72 seconds). Even if the golf disc thrown for a distance WR was legal for MTA (and you could run it down and catch it without breaking your hand), it wouldn't hover like a fastback (looks like the cheap frisbees they give away with advertising on them) or regular frisbee (IIRC WR frisbee distance is still under 500' 152m)

[mistermack]

They need to more than that, to get ME up in a max. 

But it's a start. Design something that wants to fly, not something that wants to crash. 

[Lorentz Jr]

It's almost more like a dart than an airplane. Can't have a very good glide ratio being so stubby.

[iNow]

3 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

this subject would reflect on the use of the wings being added to bombs to increase their range

Believe those are called “missiles.”

[MigL]

28 minutes ago, iNow said:

4 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

this subject would reflect on the use of the wings being added to bombs to increase their range

Believe those are called “missiles.”

Not so much for added range, but newer bombs are not free-fall or ballistic, they are laser guided or have GPS guidance, which means they need a way to steer, hence, the control surfaces.

See here         Joint Direct Attack Munition - Wikipedia

Edited March 5, 2023 by MigL

[iNow]

Yeah. I went for a cheap joke and it wasn’t even very good. Lots of bombs have fins and land better than my attempt at humor just did 

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Not so much for added range, but newer bombs are not free-fall or ballistic, they are laser guided or have GPS guidance, which means they need a way to steer, hence, the control surfaces.

See here         Joint Direct Attack Munition - Wikipedia

Do they not do both? Control flight plus add range or payload?

 

https://airwingmedia.com/news/2012/boeing-adding-wings-to-jdam-bombs-to-triple-weapons-glide-range/

Edited March 5, 2023 by J.C.MacSwell

[mistermack]

8 hours ago, Lorentz Jr said:

It's almost more like a dart than an airplane. Can't have a very good glide ratio being so stubby.

Agreed. This is more of a throw than a flight. They've got the drag down so that you can throw it a long way. 

[iNow]

8 hours ago, Lorentz Jr said:

It's almost more like a dart than an airplane

Doesn’t this apply equally to all folded paper airplanes?

[mistermack]

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

Doesn’t this apply equally to all folded paper airplanes?

I don't think so. Most will slow very quickly, no matter how hard you throw it, because of the ratio of drag to kinetic energy. But if you use dense paper, and can reduce the drag to minimum, then you can throw it a long way.

For example, if the paper was made of lead, you could throw it a lot further than if it was made of toilet tissue. 

Obviously that's taking it to the extreme to illustrate the point. 

Looking at the trajectory of the throw, it was more like a baseball throw trajectory than the traditional paper plane.

[MigL]

10 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Do they not do both? Control flight plus add range or payload?

Sure.
The version described in your link is a 'developed' version, JDAM-ER ( extended range ).
Developed for Australia, it features fold-out hi-aspect rato wings for greater glide distance, facilitating greater stand-off deployment. 
It has a range of approx. 40 mi. whereas a standard JDAM has to get much closer to its target to deploy, as it has a typical range of 10-15 mi.

[J.C.MacSwell]

20 hours ago, MigL said:

Sure.
The version described in your link is a 'developed' version, JDAM-ER ( extended range ).
Developed for Australia, it features fold-out hi-aspect rato wings for greater glide distance, facilitating greater stand-off deployment. 
It has a range of approx. 40 mi. whereas a standard JDAM has to get much closer to its target to deploy, as it has a typical range of 10-15 mi.

Right. Makes sense given the weight, dimensions, and airspeeds involved. 

I thought the Ukrainians themselves were experimenting with wings to extend their target range. I'm not sure where I heard it but IIRC it was mentioned as a possible explanation for a fairly recent bombing beyond HIMAR range. 

I would provide a proper link but can't remember where I came across it.

Edit: their current HIMAR range

[Jez]

Possibly ironically, like hypersonic aircraft before them after which it was named, it appears to be launched ballistically.

Before getting out the bunting and ticker tape, I'd like to know how far it actually 'flew', as in the period of time in which the conversion of its kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy into net vertical thrust (lift) was near unity.

To paraphrase Woody, is it flying, or falling with style?