Future of airplanes = self healing

It seems like a top sci-fi story but it isn't. It could be the future of airplanes and it is all about self-repairing planes even when they fly. To develop this engineers looked at nature and the systems to recover and repair. And ith the insights from our environments they started to devellop. The result: a material which is able to self repair itself. Interested in the future of our airplanes and possible all other kinds of devices just read on! The future self repair aairplane doesn't have only safety benefits. The new material makes it possible to design lighter aeroplanes which could lead to cutting costs in fuel, and reduce carbon emissions. The material is able to repair tiny holes in the material itself. So when there appears a tiny hole in a airplane the material repairs itself. Just think how our bodies work when we are wounded. Blood goes towards the wound and hardens to 'repair' your body. And this principle is also adjusted for future airplanes.

This approach can deal with small-scale damage that's not obvious to the naked eye but which might lead to serious failures in structural integrity if it escapes attention (dr. Ian Bond)

The material is develloped by the engineers of Bristol University. They are funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

We're also developing systems where the healing agent isn't contained in individual glass fibres but actually moves around as part of a fully integrated vascular network, just like the circulatory systems found in animals and plants. Such a system could have its healing agent refilled or replaced and could repeatedly heal a structure throughout its lifetime. Furthermore, it offers potential for developing other biological-type functions in man-made structures, such as controlling temperature or distributing energy sources (dr. Ian Bond)

The technique will probably hit the commercial market in about four years! But this is still the first step and future technologies go even further. In the future our devices will have 'vains' with fluid which enable the device to repair itself. Source: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council