Millions of consumers trust Airlines with their life every day, but very little passenger understand how these giant tubes fly in the air and why they look the way they do. I don’t remember jet planes having winglets when I was a kid, but on a recent business trip I noticed the winglets on all the planes at the airport. airport. Ailerons are the vertical tips at the end of an airplane’s wing, and they serve several important functions.
Small wings reduce the noise level of the plane aerodynamics approximately 5 percent drag through the reduction of vortices or eddies around the edges of the airfoil. These vortices are created when air flowing along an airplane’s wings curls upward as high-pressure areas form below the wings and low-pressure areas form above the wings. When these two opposing pressure systems form and the air moves toward the tip of the wing, it creates a small pressure. tornado creates resistance and wastes energy. Winglets prevent high-pressure air from under the wing from meeting low-pressure air at the top of the wing, thereby reducing drag. According to CNN,
In 1897, British aerodynamicist Frederick W. Lancaster patented “wing end plates,” vertical surfaces placed at the ends of wings to prevent airflow from below and above from meeting, reduce drag. “In many ways, end panels behave like winglets, but the lift improvement is quite poor, because the flat panels themselves are not very good aerodynamic surfaces,” Bowers explains.
This idea was refined for modern aircraft in the 1970s by NASA engineer Richard Whitcomb, who imagined vertical wing extensions. inspired By the way, birds curl up the ends of their wings when they need to be lifted.
Whitcomb tested the idea in a wind tunnel and found that winglets could reduce drag by about 5%. At the same time, winglet research was taking place independently of NASA, and business jet manufacturer LearJet was the first to install winglets on an actual aircraft in 1977. Two years later, NASA flew for the first time. tested the Air Force’s KC-135 experimental aircraft — not too dissimilar from the Boeing 707 — equipped with 9-foot-tall winglets. Through 47 test flights, NASA confirmed Whitcomb’s wind tunnel findings.
Winglets are now seen on most small and medium sized aircraft in the world, but larger aircraft uses grooved wingtips that sweep back more strongly than the rest of the wing. These canted wingtips are more effective for larger aircraft and still provide comparable wingtip vortex suppression characteristics and comparable fuel economy to winglets. In addition to fuel savings, both winglets and canted wingtips improve the aircraft’s directional stability, reducing its vulnerability to turbulence.
These seemingly simple improvements to the aviation industry have saved billions of gallons of fuel, meaning more cost savings for airline companies and airlines. Lower carbon emissions from air travel. These little wings serve a big purpose, and the next time you fly, you can attack your neighbors in line with this little bit of knowledge.
