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Old 15th Jan 2006, 19:05
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Mad (Flt) Scientist
 
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Re: Effects of different types of wings

If I may offer some thoughts.

Firstly, you don't want to be looking at the effects of wings, but the effects of wing SECTIONS. Not sure if that's what you meant to say, but a "wing" is the full 3d object, while a section is the slice through the wing in the direction of airflow. For a practical experiment you'll struggle to get good results with a full wing, because you'll end up being dominated by scale effects - the wing will end up quite small unless you build yourself a huge "wind tunnel" type device. A section, on the other hand, is simpler in operation and so simpler to test.

To be honest, I think your best option is simply to make your own. Using chunks of wood, just carve them to aerofoil sections. You could be scientific about it and get some section definitions - good places to look might be the model aircraft flying magazines or websites, which should give some simple sections - or you could just carve a "that looks about right" shape or two. Make the shape a "plank" to span the width of the little tunnel/blower you'll have to build - needent be more than 6-8" wide, I'd say, though bigger is good.

You can then use smoke to show the airflow past the "wing section". Make the wing so that you can turn it to show changes in angle of attack. Should be able to see a stall at some point.

To be more sophisticated, you could put some small tubes into the wing surface, recessed, at intervals along the chord. Terminate the tubes with small holes, which will give you pressure sensors along the chord. Hook each of the tubes up to a manometer - columns of water or other liquids - and arrange the tubes in a bank in the same order as on the wing section. Then when you switch on the air you'll get a graphical representation of the air pressure over the wing; you can compare how the suction peak moves with AoA, what happens as the wing stalls, etc.

You could get fancier by adding little flaps or slats to the wing, too, to see their effect. Or if you get a bunch of sections, try comparing the effect of camber or t/c ratios on the measured behaviour.

We used to have a little demo tunnel that did all that sort of stuff when i worked at BAe; used it for open days, school visits, etc. It's very impressive what you can get for a simple setup.
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