¿Qué ocurre realmente dentro de un túnel de viento?

¿Qué ocurre realmente dentro de un túnel de viento?

Cada aeronave que has visto en el cielo fue probada primero en una sala donde no vuela absolutamente nada. Los túneles de viento son, conceptualmente, las herramientas más simples de la ingeniería aeroespacial: se toma un tubo, se introduce aire en un extremo, se coloca un modelo en el medio y se mide lo que sucede. En...
The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel

The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel

Sit in a window seat over the wing of almost any modern airliner and you will see it: the wingtip, instead of ending in a clean point, bends sharply upward into a fin. It looks like a small design flourish. It is not. That upturned tip is quietly one of the most...
The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead of the roots as...
Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet

Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet

On the first morning of June, an Air Canada jet pushed back at Montreal and pointed its nose at Nantes, a tidy French city on the Loire that no Canadian airline had ever served nonstop. Two days later, a widebody lifted off from Toronto bound for Shanghai for the...
China Eastern Bets $9 Billion on Airbus

China Eastern Bets $9 Billion on Airbus

On a Friday afternoon in Shanghai, executives from China Eastern Airlines and Airbus signed their names to a document that quietly reshapes the balance of power in the world’s most fought-over aviation market. The deal: 25 brand-new Airbus A330-900neo widebodies, with...