Originally Posted by
Scuffers
OK, as an engineer, I am struggling to understand how winglets would make any difference to the loading on this fork?
My thinking is this, the plane's body mass has to be supported by the wings, makes no odds if the wings are bigger/smaller or more/less efficient, they still have to hold up the same mass.
If the wing and fuselage structure were infinitely rigid, indeed there would be not problem
But there is no such thing as a perfectly rigid body, and the wings and fuselage do flex under flight loads.
And wing bending involves bending moment at the wingroot.
Now if one changes the wing geometry (winglets, etc.), the point of application of the flight loads changes, and so the bending moments at the root do change for any given flight condition.