Lockheed ring wing airliner concept - GIF

[Altair]

Lockheed ring wing airliner concept.



More:
https://books.google.com/books?id=zlosooWOcW8C&pg=PA40

Previously:

Narushevich Ring Wing - video
1954 Horton Wingless aircraft - GIF
Short SB.4 Sherpa aero-isoclinic wing - GIF
Adaptive airfoil prototype - GIF
NASA AD-1 oblique wing aircraft - photo

[IntheGroove]

That couldn't produce much lift...

[Frank S]

That couldn't produce much lift...

But it fly's so well on the computer

[mwmkravchenko]

That couldn't produce much lift...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_wing

https://siamagazin.com/lockheeds-con...wing-airliner/

[nova_robotics]

It's an interesting design. I know they're trying to reduce losses associated with vortex shedding at the wing tips, but it looks like this would be a difficult plane to manage. It has a huge horizontal cross-section, so it's going to be much more at the mercy of turbulence, and storms/high winds/jet wash are going to have a much higher probability of flipping this thing while stationary. Also the engines are up too high. High thrust is going to push the nose down (see: 737 Max). I wonder why they didn't decide to mount the engines in a more conventional position under the winds?

[Toolmaker51]

Before it reaches any runway, it has to be built. Upon X amount of hours it'll need service.
Do any buildings accommodate such a profile? Current hangers have a comparatively small set of secondary doors for vertical stabilizer, that might be half the height depicted here. Not to mention scissor lifts work to position airframe and powerplant techs; this will need man-bucket boom trucks as well.
I'm no aeronautic engineer, but cannot visualize what lifting airfoil contour works on the "sides" of the torus. Then upper and lower portion seem not to offer surface area equivalent to a conventional fuselage, unless takeoff weight is perhaps halved.
Regarding current methods of building wing spars, well that's going to invalidate all kinds of capital equipment.

[Frank S]

Before it reaches any runway, it has to be built. Upon X amount of hours it'll need service.
Do any buildings accommodate such a profile? Current hangers have a comparatively small set of secondary doors for vertical stabilizer, that might be half the height depicted here. Not to mention scissor lifts work to position airframe and powerplant techs; this will need man-bucket boom trucks as well.
I'm no aeronautic engineer, but cannot visualize what lifting airfoil contour works on the "sides" of the torus. Then upper and lower portion seem not to offer surface area equivalent to a conventional fuselage, unless takeoff weight is perhaps halved.
Regarding current methods of building wing spars, well that's going to invalidate all kinds of capital equipment.

And much of this is why it fly's on the computer, and someone's imagination. Draw a circle on a piece of paper then draw 2 horizontal lines through the circle trisecting the circle into 3rds the inner section of the lower 1 3rd and the outer section of the upper 1 3rd will be your available lift surfaces, a lot of the Lift actually comes from the top surfaces of a wing which has something to do with negative pressure created by air flow. In the case of a cylindrical shaped wing or ring, you can even call it a wing, would have another negative force interring into the equation I think it might be something like a vortex compression due to the near equal amount of vertical surfaces to the amount of horizontal or lifting surfaces. canting the ring wing back several degrees may elevate much of that plus there may even be some benefit from them by compressing the air flow it might even create accelerated flow as in how air flows through a venturi the down stream is accelerated as it exits. But the biggest fault as I see it is the lack of horizontal stabilization control How would you add flaps, slats or alerions to this design
We have all seen cylindrical and box shaped kites that fly quite well though.

[Toolmaker51]

When I was very young, I tried all manner of contours (in limited facilities of ~10 yo) to compress air through 'funnels' and create propulsion on paper airplane test-beds, kite shapes, later on rubber-band powered, being lightest available. Abject failures, fun, logical, mind twisting failures.
However, developed good sketching, taking notes, measuring and timing skills, used countless times since. Took up actual flight classes, nailing ground school and simulator, then first gas crisis hit.
Goodbye flying!
Still not over it.

[odd one]

Some of my best flying paper airplanes that I made when I was younger were shaped like this. Very stable and controllable. I got the design from a navy guy that used to fly paper airplanes off of the back of aircraft carriers. You throw it with the ring forward and two fingers on top of the "tail". Thrown kind of like a ball.

[Toolmaker51]

Some of my best flying paper airplanes that I made when I was younger were shaped like this. Very stable and controllable.

Well, I'll be........! The contours I tried were tapered cylinders, not recalling any like odd one's. Of course there was less history for reference, lol.
Ouch, pulled something laughing.
https://www.google.com/search?client...aper+airplanes

All kinds of disparate opinions on origins, and far too much parroting of 'references' without citations. Hard to credit any unmechanized society with such advanced concepts. Da Vinci gets my vote.