Quote:
Originally Posted by john70t
My layman engineer brain is buzzing with that 777 folding wingtip.
Why not a lateral rotating wingtip to decrease cross section at cruising speed, like the F-14?
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1 Impossibly heavy and expensive to manufacture..
the F14 had a massive Titanium Wingbox to keep them wings in check
Wing would need to be much thicker to house the tech to rotate it.
Ti wing spars on commercial jets doesn't add up in the costs department.
a rotating mechanism is complicated
Wing sweep had a lot more function then space saving on deck.
It was a crucial aerodynamic device to give that big bird good performance over a huge range of speeds ,sub and supersonic.
Airliners only need lift and cruise. No supersonic speeds required.
2 flipping up the wing tips is cheap and known tech, navy planes have had that kind of stuff for ages. They had it during WW2 !
Wing just needs to lock in place and jobs done.
It's just a bolt that locks.... simple, safe.
3 folding back half the wing at cruising speed would not work
either swing the entire wing
or don't.
Wing simply would not work right.
Also keep in mind that wing sweep on a plane like the F14 meant a big change of Center of Gravity
You can manage that on a Tomcat being a Fighter jet
But you don't really need that kind of complicated systems on an airliners.
You don't even want that kind of complicated systems considering how some airlines in some countries train their pilots.. look at the MCAS debacle