PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - High accident rates in light twins an alternative?
Old 28th May 2008, 17:07
  #19 (permalink)  
Wizofoz
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Boldly going where no split infinitive has gone before..
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Faster air over the wings creates more lift meaning that you can reduce the angle of attack and hence the drag for a given amount of lift.

By any chance do you mean that L= CL*1/2 rho*V>2? Cause it does.

If what you said above were true, then the faster you went, the less total drag you'd produce, and the aircraft would just keep accelerating until it approached the speed of light! Congratulations, you've just invented perpetual motion and solved the universes energy crisis!!

Induced drag is one side of the story. On a typical light aircraft it reduces to near its minimum value at about 5deg A of A, and peaks at CLmax, which is to say stalling angle.

But as speed increases, so does form drag.

Tell me, if you put your hand out the window of your Seneca at 127kts as opposed to 90 kts, at which speed would you feel the most drag? That's called form drag which, as I explained, increases with velocity. Do you dispute this?

So, you have one form of drag that INCREASES with speed, and one that REDUCES (though, after a while, only by a little). At some point, the sum of these two values is at a minimum, and that is Dmin, which is very close to Vyse.

Hav a look here:- http://selair.selkirk.bc.ca/aerodyna...rag/Page9.html

Your Seneca may be able to maintain a Tas of 127 at altitude, but it won't sustain a climb at that speed. The maximum sustained rate of climb occurs at a particular speed, and the nice guys at Piper even put a blue radial on your ASI to let you know what it is.
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