The Wright brothers' test flight in 1903 was a biplane, and it was not uncommon for early airplanes to use more than one wing, biplane, triplane or quadroplane, but how many layers of wings could an airplane have?
Many of the early airplanes are biplanes, the main purpose of this design is to obtain a larger lift area, produce greater lift, another advantage is that the structure of the biplane plus strut tension line is relatively strong, can meet the requirements of the aircraft for structural strength. Theoretically, the more wings, the larger the natural area, and the greater the lift, but making the plane fly is not just about lifting enough. Historically, there was an aviation pioneer who worked to generate plenty of lift with so many wings that his planes looked like shutters in an old-fashioned house, but sadly, so many wings didn't make his dream of flying a reality. The pioneer was an Englishman named Horatio Frederick Phillips.
Horatio Frederick Phillips (1845-1924)
Practitioner of curved airfoils
Born in 1845 on the outskirts of London, the son of a gunsmith whose father was a gunsmith, Phillips Jr. had a keen interest in mechanics from an early age. At a time when flying was a major scientific problem that many scientists and engineers were desperate to find breakthroughs, Phillips was also enthusiastic about it, and he closely followed the Royal Aeronautical Society's aeronautical research using rotating arms and wind tunnels. After research, Phillips felt that the Royal Aeronautical Society's progress was too slow and thought he could do better, so he set about building his own wind tunnel and began experimenting himself, when he was not yet 40 years old.
In the experiment, he found that the airfoil with a curved arc can produce more lift than the flat airfoil, and if it goes further, the lift characteristics of the wing with a greater degree of bending on the upper surface than the lower surface can be further improved. George Kelly proposed this theory as early as the early 19th century, but at that time the pioneers of flying did not pay much attention to it, and Phillips's research data brought this theory to the fore in an empirical way for the first time, attracting the attention of aviation pioneers around the world. Since then, almost all of the pioneers of flight have adopted curved airfoils in their gliders or powered aircraft, including the German Lilienthal and the American Langley and Wright brothers. Suffice it to say, Phillips' airfoil research helped them a lot.
In the 80s of the 19th century, Phillips carefully studied the relationship between airfoil and lift. But he was too obsessed with the number of wings and paid less attention to the stability and control of the aircraft. From 1893 onwards, he began building a series of multiplanes, initially coal-fired aircraft with 50 wings – the airfoil of each wing was not chosen at random, but using Phillips' patented bisurface airfoil design. He designed a very narrow wing, with a aspect ratio of up to 1:152, and the 50-layer wings stacked on top of each other produced a lot of lift, but the stability of the aircraft became a sacrifice. This aircraft is a test aircraft, and it is not manned, and it should be said that this point still has scientific rigor. Phillips intended to use it to test the lift characteristics of his own ingenious wing form. After some testing, Phillips found that the wing could carry up to 400 pounds (180 kilograms).
In 1893 Phillips' 50-story wing test machine, an aircraft powered but not manned, was tested on a circular orbit.
The defeat of the Venetian blinds
With the optimistic conclusion of the 1893 test aircraft at the bottom, Phillips set out to build an aircraft that could truly carry people. Eleven years later, in 1904, he completed his new aircraft (1904 Aircraft). The 1904 aircraft had a slightly reduced number of wings to 20 tiers, and a cruciform tail was added for stability, with a three-wheeled landing gear underneath. The chord length of the wing (which can be understood as width) is still small, only about 10 centimeters, and still does not get rid of the spell of blinds. The engine, also built by Phillips himself, drove a pair of two-bladed pull-in propellers. The results of the tests were unfortunate that the aircraft could not achieve sustained flight, let alone any handling. Tests showed that the aircraft was very stable and uncontrollable. The best test flight is also said to have been a 15-meter (50-foot) jump. However, people do not seem to have forgotten this plane, and in the opening part of the famous aviation-themed film "The Good Guy in the Flying Machine", an elaborate replica of the Phillips Model 1904 appeared in the opening part.
In 1904, Phillips built a 20-layer wing multi-wing manned aircraft, because it only focused on lift and did not solve the problem of stability and handling, this aircraft only jumped and flew 15 meters.
The failure of the Class 1904 did not discourage Phillips, who was determined to keep trying. However, he apparently failed to recognize the key reason for the previous failure, and always believed that the lack of lift prevented the aircraft from flying continuously, which directly led to the use of up to 200 wings in the Type 1907 he built later, which was a nightmare for people with dense phobia. The aircraft, equipped with a 22-horsepower (16 kW) engine that drove a pair of 7-foot (2.1 m) propellers, was said to have achieved a range of 150 m (500 ft) in a test conducted on April 6, 1907. Although the Wright Brothers' Flyer 1 had already made its first successful flight in the United States four years earlier, the Phillips shutter monster is still regarded as the first powered aircraft to fly on British soil.
The 1907 200-wing Phillips was a shuttered aircraft, but the plane could only fly farther, and the problem of control was still an obstacle to success. (Wang Yu/Painting)
Being able to fly is of course a must-have feature of an airplane, but being able to fly alone is not enough to be a good aircraft. Compared to the conventionally designed aircraft of the time, Phillips's aircraft could not compare with the former, except for its unconventional appearance, and even deviant. Phillips's repeated efforts failed to improve flight performance, and seeing that more and more conventional layout aircraft became the new favorite of society, he finally reluctantly gave up the design of manned aircraft.
In 1946, Northrop used Pellips's louvered aircraft as a starting point in an advertisement to show Northrop's many innovations in wing design, including the 1929 inner support wing, the 1932 split flap, the 1941 retractable aileron, and finally the shocking flying wing.
In the opening part of the famous 1965 aviation film "The Good Guy in the Flying Machine", an elaborate replica of the Phillips Model 1904 appeared.