An aircraft and an aircraft wing assembly for an aircraft. The wing assembly includes a wing body assembly including a wing body; and at least one protruding portion connected to the wing body. The protruding portion extends aftwardly from an aft side of the wing body assembly, a leading edge of the wing body assembly defining a leading edge line, a trailing edge of the wing body assembly defining a trailing edge line extending between the inboard end and the outboard end, the trailing edge including a trailing edge of the protruding portion, the trailing edge line being a smooth line, a chord distance being defined longitudinally from the leading edge line to the trailing edge line, the chord distance at a center of the protruding portion being greater than the chord distance inboard of protruding portion and outboard of the protruding portion.

An aircraft and an aircraft wing assembly for an aircraft. The wing assembly includes a wing body assembly including a wing body; and at least one protruding portion connected to the wing body. The protruding portion extends aftwardly from an aft side of the wing body assembly, a leading edge of the wing body assembly defining a leading edge line, a trailing edge of the wing body assembly defining a trailing edge line extending between the inboard end and the outboard end, the trailing edge including a trailing edge of the protruding portion, the trailing edge line being a smooth line, a chord distance being defined longitudinally from the leading edge line to the trailing edge line, the chord distance at a center of the protruding portion being greater than the chord distance inboard of protruding portion and outboard of the protruding portion.

An aircraft having distributed fans for boundary layer ingestion is provided. In one aspect, an aircraft includes a fuselage extending between a forward end and an aft end. The aircraft includes a plurality of boundary layer ingestion fans arranged in an array. Each fan of the array is mounted to and arranged circumferentially around the aft end of the fuselage. The fans are positioned so as to ingest boundary layer airflow flowing along the fuselage. At least two fans of the array are different sizes. Each fan of the fan array is operatively coupled with an electric machine. The electric machines are operable to drive their respective fans to produce thrust. The fans of the array are independently controlled in accordance with the boundary layer suction requirements of the aircraft.

Systems and methods are described herein to implement transverse momentum injection at low frequencies to directly modify large-scale eddies in a turbulent boundary layer on a surface of an object. A set of transverse momentum injection actuators may be positioned on the surface of the object to affect large-scale eddies in the turbulent boundary layer. The system may include a controller to selectively actuate the transverse momentum injection actuators with an actuation pattern to affect the large-scale eddies to modify the drag of the fluid flow on the surface. In various embodiments, the transverse momentum injection actuators may be operated at frequencies less than 10,000 Hertz.

An airflow separation detecting method includes: applying an alternating-current voltage having a predetermined voltage value to a plasma actuator, the plasma actuator being disposed on a part of a surface of an object; and detecting that separation, from the surface of the object, of an airflow flowing on the surface of the object is occurring, in a case where an absolute value of a temporal variation rate of an electric power consumption value of the plasma actuator or an absolute value of a temporal variation rate of a current value of the plasma actuator is equal to or greater than a predetermined value, the temporal variation rate being a rate of variation relative to time, the electric power consumption value or the current value of the plasma actuator being measured under application of the alternating-current voltage having the predetermined voltage value to the plasma actuator.

A system and related methods for storing data from avionics sensors and displaying the data on flight display. The data is received from the avionics sensor. The data is recorded in a memory according to a storage period, the storage period based on at least in part on a sampling rate of the signal. Furthermore, the memory may be limited to a fixed amount of data, with the oldest data being replaced with newer data. The data is further displayed on a flight display adjacent to a linear scale, with an orientation and position such that the data corresponds to values on the linear scale. By the data displayed on the flight display, an aircraft operator may visually determine trends regarding in-flight data in minimal time, thereby reducing cognitive workload.

Variable-porosity panel systems and associated methods. A variable-porosity panel system includes a panel assembly with an exterior layer defining a plurality of exterior layer pores and a sliding layer adjacent to the exterior layer and defining a plurality of sliding layer pores. The variable-porosity panel system additionally includes a shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator configured to translate the sliding layer relative to the exterior layer to modulate a porosity of the panel assembly. The SMA actuator includes an SMA element configured to exert an actuation force on the sliding layer and at least partially received within an SMA element receiver of the sliding layer. The SMA element extends out of the sliding layer only at a sliding layer first end. A method of operating the variable-porosity panel system includes assembling the variable-porosity panel system and/or transitioning the panel assembly of the variable-porosity panel system among the plurality of panel configurations.

Method of adjusting the pressure balance or a control device, in particular of a servo valve, the requisite adjusting movement being applied by a disc translator.

An element comprising a non-stick surface for substantially cleanly removing a product which is arranged against said non-stick surface. The element comprises a first layer of an pervious material, which is configured to allow a fluid to flow there through. An outer surface of said first layer provides the non-stick surface. The element comprises a second layer of an impervious material, which is configured to substantially block a flow of fluid there through. The second layer is arranged at a side of said first layer opposite to the outer surface. The element comprises ducts or chambers which are arranged in said first layer or in between said first and second layer. Said ducts or chambers are arranged in fluid connection with said pervious material and are configured for feeding a pressurized fluid to the pervious material. At least the first layer is formed using a three-dimensional printing tool.

In order to suppress aeroelastic instabilities on a transonically operating aircraft comprising a pair of wing halves at which a transonic flow forms spatially limited supersonic flow regions that each, in a main flow direction of the flow, end in a compression shock, a boundary layer of the flow is temporarily thickened-up in at least one supersonic flow region at at least one of the two wing halves, when approaching a flight envelope of the aircraft with increasing flight Mach number of the aircraft. The boundary layer of the flow is thickened-up to such an extent that the compression shock at the end of the respective supersonic flow region at the present flight Mach number of the aircraft induces a separation of the boundary layer of the flow from the wing half.