Description

Wooden wing in the form of a series of slender wood spines made of degame wood carrying balsa formers. The wings are attached to a central metal spar made out of Dural, an aluminum alloy.

As planes got larger and faster in the early twentieth century, a problem emerged: flutter. After a certain velocity, airplane wings sometimes began to vibrate. If left unchecked, this vibration increased in amplitude until the force tore the wings clear off the plane.

The MIT Flutter Research Lab opened in 1940 to research flutter in the large bombers of WWII. Researchers built models like this one to determine the velocity at which flutter started, and what design changes could eliminate it.