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Old 28th Jul 2010, 11:36
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Mad (Flt) Scientist
 
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That kind of shape - the one drawn is a bit exaggerated or idealised of course - might occur where the first peak - the traditional CLmax - occurs where the airflow separates from the wing and the wing stalls. The increase in CL with AOA that is added later can be due to two things:

1. The body or other non-wing component is now lifting enough at the higher AOA to compensate for the loss of wing lift. Some fighter types see this kind of behaviour.

2. If the wing is highly swept, there may now be vortices being generated along the LE of the wing which cause it to start to lift again. Crudely, Concorde did something like this, except without such pronounced peaks and troughs I believe.

A third possibility is in the presentation. If you are careless with definitions you can end up with the drag force being accounted into apparent lift. This can occur if you define the lift force as "up" in aircraft body terms (sometimes called "Cz") instead of the more usual "up in terms of direction of flight" that is usually used. But I'm assuming it's one of the first two.
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