Airplanes cannot easily turn unless they can bank. Much like a turning speedboat, an airplane must lean into the turn if it is going to be a well controlled turn. Over the last 100 years the mechanism that enables such banking is the aileron on each wing. Many of us confuse ailerons for flaps, but if you watch carefully the next time you fly you will see them used whenever the airplane turns.
However, when the Wright brothers invented the airplane they recognized the need to bank into turns, but they noticed that birds did it by twisting their wings. So that is how the Wright’s did it with early airplanes. Within a decade wing twisting was replaced by ailerons because the twisting of bi-plane wings could be hazardous at even moderate speed. However, advances in materials is now making possible the bird-like twisting motion and Dan Grant who is a U-of- F doctoral student has demonstrated the feasibility in this video. He now is working on the mathematical modeling of the wing.
Tags: Ailerons, airplane design, University of Florida, wing design, Wright Brothers