British scientists invent aircraft wings that can fix themselves mid-flight

British scientists invent aircraft wings that can fix themselves in mid-flight in breakthrough for ‘self-healing technology’

It’s a futuristic concept bordering on science fiction but scientists believe they have created aircraft wings that can fix themselves in mid-flight – and they say it heralds a breakthrough in self-healing technology.

This week the team of British scientists will unveil their major technological advancement – billed as a crucial step in the emerging scientific field – at a Royal Society meeting in London.

It means self-healing nail polish, golf clubs, tennis racquets, fishing rods, bike helmets and the end of cracked mobile phone screens could all now be just around the corner.

The research, which a team of University of Bristol scientists have spent the past three years working on, would allow aircraft wings to repair themselves mid-flight following a bird strike.

Speaking to The Independent on Sunday about developing the technology, the team’s leader Professor Duncan Wass said he expected consumers to be able to purchase self-healing products in the ‘very near future’.

The researchers worked with aerospace engineers at the university to look at ways to prevent tiny cracks forming in an aircraft’s wings and fuselage.

The solution they came up with involves adding tiny, hollow ‘microspheres’ to the carbon fibre composite materials used widely in the manufacture of commercial aircraft wings. These break on impact, releasing a liquid healing agent which seeps into the cracks left by the damage.

It then comes into contact with a catalyst which triggers a rapid chemical reaction that causes the agent to harden. The material was found to be just as strong after it was ‘healed’.

Professor Wass said: ‘We took inspiration from the human body.

‘We’ve not evolved to withstand any damage – if we were like that we’d have a skin as thick as a rhinoceros – but if we do get damaged, we bleed, and it scabs and heals.

‘We just put that same sort of function into a synthetic material: let’s have something that can heal itself.’

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