A discovery by a team of Japanese scientists is being hailed as the possible answer to the development of futuristic shape-shifting aircraft. The idea of an aircraft that can change shape has long been the stuff of science fiction but if it could become a reality it would have widespread implications for aviation’s energy efficiency and speed. Unfortunately, finding the components with the flexibility and strength required to make a safe, shape-shifting plane has proved out-of-reach until now.
Titanium and nickel alloy
Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) have created an alloy that is both flexible and strong. The material is made of titanium and nickel, a combination that has previously been shown to be able to stretch much more than other metallic alloys, retain its new form, and even return to its original shape if heated.
Despite finding the right alloy, one sticking point in the development of eventual shapeshifting craft was the fact that very specific temperatures were needed to make it display those properties.
Three-step process
Now though, a team led by Doctor Xiaobing Ren, a NIMS professor and Ferroic Physics Group member, has found that the way to make the alloy usable over a wider range of temperatures involves a three-step process:
- deforming and elongating the alloy by over 50 percent;
- heating it to 572 Fahrenheit (300 degrees Centigrade);
- elongating it again but this time by 12%.
After this procedure, the material could withstand a steel-rivalling 18,000-times greater pressure than normally found in the atmosphere, and still be 20 times more flexible than the untreated alloy, and all this at temperatures ranging from minus 112 Fahrenheit to 176 Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees to 80 degrees Celsius).
The seeds of deformation
There is a Buddhist saying that “the glass is already broken” that teaches the ability to find joy by appreciating that an “unbroken” glass will one day shatter. The beauty of the new material is in some ways a reflection and extension of that philosophy, since Ren told the New Scientist the alloy becomes almost glass-like thanks to the new process but contains molecules or “seeds” of deformation that help it to alter shape instead of break.
What’s more, the three-step procedure innovated by Ren and his team, is simple enough to be scaled up elsewhere, meaning that industrial uses are not far off and we could be witnessing shape-shifting aircraft in our skies sooner than we dreamed.
