The Mystery of Wing Twisting

The technological jump from no functional aeroplane to the first serious military fighter occurred in a mere 10 years. The Wright brothers conducted their first flight in late 1903 and by 1914 WWI broke out with an associated expansion in military flying. This expansion occurred almost entirely without the benefits of organised science in formal institutions and universities, and was led predominantly by tinkering aviators.

Aircraft pioneers were often gifted flying-buffs or sporting daredevils, but very few of them had any real theoretical knowledge. This proved to be sufficient for the early developments, when flying was mostly a matter of strapping a powerful and lightweight engine to a basic flying design, and having the skills to keep the aircraft aloft and stable. Many pioneers, like Charles Rolls, paid with their lives for this mindset and it took many accidents from stalls and spins to figure out that something was amiss.

The specifications and operating environment of aeroplanes was, of course, entirely different from either cars or trains. Particularly the design requirements for reliable yet lightweight construction posed a conundrum for early aerospace engineers. To make something stronger, a rule of thumb is to add more material. For aircraft this means increasing the wallthickness of the beams, frames and plates that comprise the aircraft. Of course, by making components thicker, the structure becomes heavier and less likely to fly. Furthermore, thicker structures are stiffer, which causes loads to be redirected within the structure, and rather counter-intuitively, can make the aircraft more likely to fail. This counter-intuitive finding was played-out during the discovery of wing twisting.

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