PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Delta Wings and Flap
View Single Post
Old 23rd July 2001 | 18:01
  #3 (permalink)  
Genghis the Engineer
Moderator
30 Countries Visited
25 Anniversary
Veteran: Reserves
 
Joined: Feb 2000
: CPL
Posts: 14,480
Likes: 178
From: UK
Post

Agree with tinstaafl, although the reasons vary between deltas and canards as he says.

With a delta, frankly it's not needed. They keep lifting to higher and higher alpha, eventually stalling around 30-35°. There's no need for flaps, the main problem is still seeing the runway when you're that nose-up (hence the famous Concorde drooping nose).

With multiple wings you have to match the lift of each or you get a huge, and potentially uncontrollable pitch change with flap selection. This is very hard to mechanise successfully, and I'm not sure that anybody's ever really succeeded.

I believe Darrrol Stinton's done quite a lot of work on the latter subject, although I'm not sure where he published it.

G
Genghis the Engineer is offline