SA-developed ‘flying boomerang’ will revolutionise aircraft design

Ever since the Wright brothers took to the air in a controlled and sustained flight on December 17, 1903, at its very core aircraft design has remained the same, with two or four wings connected to a tube stabilised by a tail wing – but now a South African is leading the charge to throw the 116-year-old design out the window.

Joburg boykie – “I grew up in the south!” – and aeronautical engineer Malcolm Brown is spearheading the model of a radical design that could change the shape of flying forever: it does away with the central tube design, putting passengers in the wings themselves.

It’s called the “Flying V” and resembles a boomerang in shape, taking aircraft design past delta-wing aircraft, such as the Vulcan delta wing, SR-71B Lockheed bomber, F14 Tomcat, the Concord or the biggest of them all, the space shuttle.

“The current tube and wing design is heavily optimised and reaching the top of its development s-curve,” Brown said.

“The issue is that the fuselage does not add to the lift of the aircraft while making significant drag. By integrating the fuselage into the wing, you reduce the total aircraft surface area in contact with air which causes reduced drag.

“As with anything cutting edge, there’s a long road ahead especially with people’s lives at stake.

“If the tree bears fruit and the design carries on to service it would still take many years: 2035-40 would be the aim,” Brown said.

“The design of the Flying V had already begun with master thesis research supervised by Dr Roelof Vos and I was following it,” Brown said.

“When he began talking about building a sub-scale flying demonstration model, I was very keen on getting involved. I had some radio control aircraft building and flying experience in SA and designing and testing new concepts was always a dream job for me, so it was a good match.”

Brown is currently the chief engineer of the scaled model, and production is in full progress. The design itself looks like something out of a Star Trek movie, with the exception of the two very large jet engines mounted on the rear of the wings, giving it the appearance of a platanna, AKA the African clawed frog.

“The Flying V will use very high bypass ratio engines, giving large fan diameters. We chose to use a conventional nacelle and inlet to reduce the design risk at this stage of ensuring streamlined airflow to the engine,” Brown said.

“More integrated options such as boundary layer ingestion are a current research item in aerospace and, if it proves advantageous, it could be applied to the Flying V in later design.

“In the near future I will be responsible for the data analysis, along with my team of students, in order to draw conclusions about our testing and make design changes,” Brown said.

Delta-winged aircraft all have a similar wing characteristic in that they end in a squared-off trailing edge for the aircraft’s flaps, something the Flying V will not have.

“Due to the large wing area, traditional flaps are not required on the inboard wing so it can be more swept. Control and stability is one of our main research questions for the flying model,” Brown noted.

The Flying V, developed with Dutch Airline KLM, is projected to take up the same space on a runway as the Airbus A350 – 900, which, at 66.89m long and a wingspan of 64.75 meters, makes a lot of shade on a sunny day.

The model being built by Brown and his team will be 1/20th in size.

“The model uses two 5.5kW electric ducted fans, together drawing almost 300 amps, so gone are my days of rubber bands,” Brown said, referring to his early days in scale-model flying.

The flying scale model and a full-size section of the interior of the Flying-V will be presented at the KLM Experience Days at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on October 7 at KLM’s 100th anniversary.

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