PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - What happened to those VG's on the 737
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Old 11th Sep 2017, 10:24
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tdracer
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Everett, WA
Age: 68
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Underfire, I think if you look you'll see what we call "intake strakes" (also known as 'Engine Ears' ) on most aircraft with big fan engines hanging under the wings. While less than desirable, they are a solution to a very messy problem. With an engine not running during final approach to landing, all that air spilling out of the inlet separates and messes up the airflow over a fair part of the wing (and during an engine out approach, loosing a bunch of lift is rather undesirable), That strake reenergizes that spillage out of the inlet and prevents it from separating the airflow over the wing.

BTW, to the original question, I suspect the aero engineers developed a more elegant fix for the aft fuselage separation problem than the vortex generators...
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