A swept gradient air boundary layer diverter for an aircraft. The aircraft includes a fuselage and an air inlet for an engine of the aircraft, where the air inlet includes a cowl at a leading edge of the inlet. The diverter includes a V-shaped ramp portion formed in the fuselage in an area proximate to and in front of the cowl where the ramp portion extends downward away from an outer surface of the fuselage towards an inside of the aircraft. The diverter also includes a V-shaped trough portion formed into the fuselage and being positioned adjacent to and integral with the ramp portion between the ramp portion and the air inlet. Air flowing over the fuselage towards the cowl is expanded and compressed by the ramp portion and the trough portion so as to create pressure gradients that generate vortices to redirect boundary layer airflow around the air inlet.

A winglet includes a winglet body and a control body. The winglet body includes a first winglet surface arranged opposite a second winglet surface. The second winglet surface is joined to the first winglet surface to form front and trailing edges of the winglet body. The second winglet surface defines a control body seat. The control body is coupled to the winglet body to move between a stowed position seated in the control body seat and a deployed position rotated out of the control body seat. The control body includes a first control surface arranged to face toward the winglet body, a second control surface arranged opposite the first control surface to face away from the winglet body and joined to the first control surface to form a trailing edge of the control body and a control front connecting the first control surface and the second control surface.

The invention relates to a wing for an airplane having at least two winglets, wherein a local angle of attack at the upstream winglet shall be reduced by a passive elastic morphing in heavy load conditions and wherein stall shall occur for the downstream winglet, then. Both serves for limiting and reducing the forces and torques produced by the winglets.

Vortex reduction apparatus for use with airfoils are disclosed. An example vortex reduction apparatus includes a housing to couple to a tip of an airfoil. The housing defines a volute fluid flow passageway between an inlet and an outlet. The volute fluid flow passageway is structured to induce a rotational fluid flow in a first rotational direction opposite a second rotational direction of a shed vortex induced at the tip of the airfoil during flight.

Systems, devices, and methods for tracking and/or predicting motion of a wing of an aircraft are disclosed herein. The systems, devices, and methods track wing motion (e.g., in real-time). In some embodiments, the systems and devices include stereo binocular vision (SBV) cameras and/or light detection and ranging (LIDAR) emitters and receivers mounted on the aircraft. In these and other embodiments, the systems and devices include a network of contact sensors (e.g., accelerometers or strain gauges) mounted on a wing and corresponding receivers mounted on the aircraft. In these and other embodiments, based at least in part on the captured wing motion data, machine learning is employed to predict wing motion (e.g., normal, turbulent, and/or chaotic wing motion) of the aircraft.

An active wing extension includes a body portion substantially parallel to a wing of an aircraft, as if it were an extension of the wing. The body portion is attachable to an aircraft wing and includes multiple controllable airflow modification devices coupled thereto. By virtue of having multiple controllable airflow modification devices, the wing extension is capable of adjusting control surfaces of the multiple controllable airflow modification devices in response to in-flight conditions, to reduce wing loads, improve wing fatigue characteristics, increase range, and/or increase efficiency.

An aircraft is disclosed having a wing, the wing having a fixed wing with a wing tip device moveably mounted about a hinge at the tip thereof. The wing tip device is operable between a flight configuration, and a load alleviating configuration for load alleviation during flight. The aircraft includes a restraining assembly operable between a restraining mode in which the wing tip device is held in the flight configuration using a restraining force such as by a brake, and a releasing mode in which the restraining force on the wing tip device is released, such that the wing tip device may adopt the load alleviating configuration.

Methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture to control and monitor a folding wingtip actuation system are disclosed. An example apparatus includes a sequence and control module to determine whether to control a movement of a folding wingtip assembly coupled to a wing of an aircraft, the sequence and control module is to determine actions during a first stage and a second stage to complete in sequence to move the folding wingtip assembly, determine a status of a first component of the folding wingtip assembly based on a sensor measurement, in response to the status being a non-responsive status, replace a first input from the first component with a second input from a second component, and control the movement of the folding wingtip assembly based on the actions and the second input.

An aircraft having a wing, including a fixed wing with a wing tip device movably mounted at the outer end thereof is disclosed. The wing tip device is movable between: a flight configuration; and a ground configuration. The wing tip device and the fixed wing are separated along an oblique primary cut plane. The wing tip device and the fixed wing meet along an interfacing cut line. The wing tip device and fixed wing comprise a wing skin with a thickness, and end faces extending across the thickness of the wing skin provide interfacing surfaces corresponding to the interfacing cut line, wherein the interfacing surfaces are angled at a first orientation towards the front of the wing and a second, opposite, orientation towards the rear of the wing.

A stall trigger system is disclosed having an aircraft wing tip or aircraft wing tip device, a plurality of sets of stall triggers distributed along a span of the aircraft wing tip or aircraft wing tip device. Each set of stall triggers comprises one or more stall triggers which can be activated to trigger local separation of air flow over the aircraft wing tip or aircraft wing tip device, and each set of stall triggers has a different activation threshold. A control system configured to monitor a parameter, and activate each set of stall triggers in response to the parameter reaching its respective activation threshold.