Modern passenger planes are pretty impressive machines. They carry hundreds of , pack in and can even in the right conditions. They’re also built to withstand some pretty serious weather, which means that their wings bend way further than you might expect.
A modern aircraft’s wing is an incredibly complex piece of engineering. On , the wings hold the plane’s massive jet engines, house the fuel tanks that keep those engines running and come festooned with all kinds of flaps and movable parts to control the ascent and descent of the plane. The wings on a plane are also designed with a fair amount of flex in an attempt to smooth out the ride when or turbulence while flying.
But have you ever seen just how much flex aircraft wings are designed for? Because It’s more than I expected. A lot more. In stress-test , the two aircraft manufacturers showcase the kinds of tests they put their planes through before they enter service.
At Airbus, this includes locking test aircraft in an enormous metal cage and applying all kinds of forces to key parts of the plane. One such A350 XWB during its development included pushing and pulling the wings to see how far they could flex, and then measuring the impact this flex had on the internal structures of the plane. To do this, to the span of a wing on an A350 XWB and then applied all kinds of positive and negative loads to push and pull the wing.
Across the tests, engineers at the company found that the maximum distance each wing could fl.