Team led by Moroccan scientist push NASA's aviation towards efficiency

A NASA team, led by Moroccan researcher, Othmane Benafan took steps toward making aircrafts more efficient for greener skies and more sustainable aviation.

NASA and The Boeing Co. worked together to investigate how using torque from twisting can lower or raise a part that doesn’t move right now, namely an airplane’s vortex generators (VG) – a small, flat pieces of metal that protrude like fins from the surface of an airplane’s wing, according to NASA’s press release.

Materials research engineer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Othmane Benafan said, “It doesn’t bend out of shape. It doesn’t extend. It doesn’t shrink. It twists on its axis.”

“A row of SMART VGs on board the Boeing ecoDemonstrator first undergoing ground tests before later taking to the air,” said the same source.

“The tests are part of the Boeing ecoDemonstrator program, which takes promising technologies out of laboratories and puts them through rigorous testing in a real operational environment,” explained the same source, noting that those flight tests took place since late October.

The ultimate goal of this study is to be able to decrease drag in flight, which could reduce aviation’s environmental impact and save airlines expenses, specified the same source.

“So far the VGs are working wonderfully, and I can’t wait to see the data and compare it to our lab testing,” Benafan said after the first flight test.

“More lift results, which is a welcome feature during high-lift phases of a flight, such as takeoff, climb, approach, and landing,” further stated NASA in the same press release.

Additionally, the test findings showed that the capability would reduce overall drag on the airplane, meaning the engines wouldn’t have to work as hard to keep the airplane flying, saving fuel and releasing fewer emissions.

“Officially the research activity is called Shape Memory Alloy Reconfigurable Technology Vortex Generators, or SMART VG,” explained NASA.

“We’ve worked with Boeing on this idea from the start. Given some basics of the device’s geometry, the temperatures, etc., we designed the alloys to match those requirements,”  said Benafan, according to the same source.

Boeing then tested the alloys and assembled the VG hardware, which was designed in collaboration with the German company Deharde.

“Although flight tests on the Boeing ecoDemonstrator are going well, the SMART VG team will not declare success until they have thoroughly examined all of their data and compared their results to their pre-test predictions and simulations,” concluded the same source.