Aircraft Wood, again...;-)

[WaspAir]

I want one!


(First saw a replica in the '60s Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines movie and lusted after it ever since.)

 

[WaspAir]

But this would be SO EASY out of foam and glass/carbon, and no flying wires.......

Yes, but plucking the wires to test the tone is the best part of pre-flight.

 

[Mayfield]

I want one!


(First saw a replica in the '60s Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines movie and lusted after it ever since.)

It has to be one of my favorites! It looks elegant. The Curtiss and the Wright aircraft of the time look clumsy in comparison

 

[Aerofoam]

It has to be one of my favorites! It looks elegant. The Curtiss and the Wright aircraft of the time look clumsy in comparison

It could be the first ultralight....

 

[Jean Claude]

Tubes are easily shaped by bending or extruding metal. So, I don't think it makes sense to manufacture tubes from wood.
But plywood is interesting when used to form a shell, and a shell is interesting for a stream-line shape.

Here, same weight as a Bensen, despite the Rotax 503 being heavier than the Mac.

 

[Doug Riley]

One caution about wood construction: crash safety.

Wood is very elastic; like artificial composites, this natural composite will bend to a remarkable extent and still return to its original shape. It's a natural spring.

Wood is not ductile at ordinary temperatures, however. Once it's bent past its elastic limit, unlike, say, 4130, wood breaks abruptly. That is, it instantly releases the energy injected into it during the bending. In contrast, steel enters plastic deformation. It deforms permanently, but continues to absorb energy. (We've all noticed that, when we bend metal to a new shape, it gets hot; sometimes too hot to touch.)

In aircraft practice, this means that a wooden fuselage will splinter in a crash, tending to create dangerous daggers of split wood, while a tube-and rag fuselage will crumple but stay together, turning some of the crash energy into heat.

6061-T6 is less tough than 4130, breaking rather easily once loaded past its elastic limit.

The takeaway here is that Piper Cub construction, with a tube-and-rag fuselage cage and wood wings, may be the best of both worlds from the crash-safety viewpoint. Alas, both of these construction methods are labor-intensive and therefore costly in a commercial production setting.