According to a report from Flightglobal, Airbus will soon start flight testing an A340 that has been fitted with experimental laminar-flow wing sections.
Our resident Aerospace engineering expert, Jay Bhatti, commented:
With this laminar airflow technology you get much cleaner airflow over the wing, which results in less drag and therefore less fuel consumption. An 8% reduction is expected, which is massive for airliners! And even though Airbus led the R&D work on BLADE, it is important to highlight that UK SMEs contributed over 80% of the innovation within the project.
Article originally published on Composite Manufacturing Magasine.
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