Hello BIK_116.80,
I would be grateful if you could tell me why my theory is so flawed?
Overstress....
Look, I'll make this my last post as you clearly believe I am wrong
.....I have looked at the NASA website, and I can see where you are coming from and I can also see what I am trying to say. Ignoring any additional forces from engines etc, Lift is the force generated by the wing due to Bernoulli's principal, it acts at 90° to the reletive airflow. This is what lift is.
If a Pitts is in a vertical dive, ie. nose pointing straight at the ground and accellerating, the wings are still at a few degrees AoA, with airflow over the wing. Therefore Lift will be generated at 90° to the reletive airflow, which in this case will be in a horizontal direction. Remember reletive airflow is defined as the angle the airflow makes with the chord of the wing. This will cause the aircraft to track horizontally across the ground. To overcome this the pilot will put the nose a few degrees beyond the vertical to reduce AoA of the wing to about -4°, which casues CL to be zero and hence lift to be zero. Now the aircraft is falling (with style!) due to the effects of gravity and its engine. The only thing that will stop it accellerating forever is the effect of induced drag (and imminent contact with the earth).
When is lift greatest in flight (not in theory, or in a wind tunnel test)
To answer your ambiguous question,
Anytime the AoA of the wing is near max, be it in a decent, a climb, S&L.....the wing is then generating the maximum possible lift that it can
Its not just me who believes this, as Trevor Thom puts it:-
An aerofoil has the greatest lifting ability at high AoA, just prior to the stalling AoA....Lift is the total reaction at right angles to the reletive airflow....
Cheers
EA
