Why do aircraft wings on aircraft carriers often fold up?

Foldable wings change the shape of wings in different flight environments to complete specific flight tasks: the wings are fully deployed to obtain a larger lift-drag ratio, and a longer flying time is conducive to take-off or cruising; When flying at high speed or maneuvering, fold the wings to reduce flight resistance and obtain higher sprint speed. Lockheed Martin of the United States has started the research on folding wings. Piezoelectric actuators can be used to fully or partially open the wings to adapt to different flight conditions and maintain good flight performance.

The folding variant aircraft studied at home and abroad all fold the wings upwards, open the trunk when the aircraft takes off, and fold the wings upwards when the aircraft cruises to reduce the resistance. The wing area changes greatly, and the effect is more obvious, but its difficulty coefficient is greater.

The flying wing layout aircraft has high aerodynamic efficiency, but the flying wing layout aircraft can't install a huge lifting device on the trailing edge of the aircraft like the conventional aircraft. In order to ensure aerodynamic efficiency, the wing area is made smaller, which reduces the take-off and landing quality of flying wing layout aircraft. To ensure the quality of take-off and landing, it is necessary to increase the wing area, but the aerodynamic efficiency will be greatly reduced.

Variant aircraft are divided into many forms. There are mainly active aeroelastic wings (AAW), slipper wings, compression wings and folding wings.

The folding variant aircraft studied at home and abroad all fold the wings upwards, open the trunk when the aircraft takes off, and fold the wings upwards when the aircraft cruises to reduce the resistance. The wing area changes greatly, and the effect is more obvious, but its difficulty coefficient is greater.

Traditional aircraft design usually adopts the method of changing the wing shape, such as adopting leading-edge slats and trailing-edge flaps, changing the sweep angle, changing the camber of the airfoil, changing the spread length and so on. In order to adapt to the time-varying conditions such as take-off, landing, cruising and high-speed flight, and strive to obtain ideal performance. However, this method has complex mechanism, limited function and low efficiency, and it is difficult to adapt to the wide range of flight conditions. A new generation of aerospace vehicles take off from the ground or carrier platform, fly through the atmosphere and perform various tasks, and the flight environment, conditions and status change greatly; However, it is difficult for an aircraft controlled by fixed shapes and traditional mechanical mechanisms to adapt to such a wide range of changes, so it is impossible to maintain excellent performance all the time.