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Air-Elf Aircraft Concept Is Able to Take-off or Land Vertically

Air-Elf aircraft concept is to solve road congestion. The core of the concept is a new type of wing, “Air Caterpillar”. It can be transformed in order to meet the needs of flexibility and speed of the aircraft. Air-Elf aircraft not only can take off and land vertically, but also is able to perform high-speed cruising....

“Air Caterpillar” wings consist of a main structure and many small wings. These small wings can move horizontally and circularly to provide lifting force constantly. “Air caterpillar” wings are highly transformable to meet the parking, vertical takeoff and landing, high-speed cruising requirements.

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  • $\begingroup$ Very dicey. Wings need to maximize cross air flow per surface. If you put them into a series, at best you wind up with the equivalent of a very inefficient small-bore turbine engine with lots of unnecessary mass due to using many small wings in series, and lots of side loss do to the lack of containment. In short, it's going to be a lot easier to generate wind noise than lift. $\endgroup$
    – Terry Bollinger
    Commented Mar 8, 2012 at 23:55

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Vertical take-off/landing aircrafts already exist, the Harrier is probably the most notable example.

The Air-Elf however is not an aircraft, it is an image on a web page. It does not seem that any actual engineering has gone into it.

The wings should supposedly work by the cyclogyro principle, note that the Wikipedia article seems rather biased towards the concept.

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  • $\begingroup$ Cool - I found the patent on Espacenet - I know about VTOL and Harrier - this was a different kettle of fish $\endgroup$
    – mplungjan
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 6:09
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It looks to me that in principle it could work, but there are practical issues:

  • the wings are small, meaning it would take a lot of power, thus heavy engine, high fuel consumption, etc.

  • stability and balance. I see no tail or delta or canard to stabilize its airspeed. Hardly any control surfaces besides the stubby wing.

There is a tendency to be really skeptical of novel aircraft designs, and skepticism is a good thing, but the Wright Brothers encountered huge skepticism. In fact, there's plenty of room for inventiveness in aviation.

Just look at Terrafugia and Rutan.

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  • $\begingroup$ Seems the Cyclogyro mentioned in the other answer would handle the stability ;) $\endgroup$
    – mplungjan
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 6:11

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