PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Is there any wingtip vortex (by induced drag) at low angle of attack?
Old 28th Jul 2016, 10:33
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Baikonour
 
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Hi Isaac,

you seem to be having a lot of basic aerodynamics questions. You will probably get better answers from your teacher/lecturer than from an internet forum. They may also be able to help you correct some of the misunderstanding which you seem to have, as evidenced by your posts.

As for your specific question, put very simply, a wing produces lift because there is a higher pressure on the bottom than on the top, and these are separated by solid barrier (the wing). Where there is no wing, air will flow from the high pressure area (bottom) to the low pressure area (top). This is what creates the vortices at the wingtips. The only way you can have no vortices is (i) no lift is produced or (b) an infinite wing.

I don't know why you refer to 4° AoA - there is nothing magical about 4° and any CL v. AOA will be a function of camber, profile etc.
Your statement that "If both upper and lower surface static pressure are lower then atmospheric pressure" is irrelevant. The absolute pressure (whether compared to what you call the atmospheric pressure or anything else) is completely irrelevant to whether the wing creates lift or not. The only thing relevant to the wing is the pressures on the wing surface and, if you want to have lift generated, the sum vector of those pressures around the wing surface needs to point upwards.
In reality, you will *mostly* find that pressure underneath the wing will be higher than what you call atmospheric pressure, and pressure on top of will be lower, but you could create lift even where both surfaces are at a lower pressure than ambient, as long as the differential is 'upwards'.

This :
The static pressure on the upper surface tends to move in towards the fuselage, creating a spanwise flow. The static pressure on the lower surface is higher than atmospheric, and this creates a spanwise movement of air towards the wingtip. The spanwise flows on upper and lower surfaces are on opposite directions, and vortices form when where the two flows meet on the trailing edge of the aerofoil. The vortices takes energy out of the airflow around the aerofil and so increases drag. Induced drag decrease as the speed increases because the angle of attack is reduced, but it sill exists (according to the drag curve).
Is all more or less wrong and/or presented the wrong way around. Pressures don't move anywhere, they "just exist". The spanwise airflows result from pressure differentials around a finite span and are not inherent in the lift creation. Vortices (which do not arise where the flows meet but arise where the flow "turns the corner" at the wingtips) do not 'take energy' from anything, if anything they add energy to the airflow - e.g. vortex generators are often used on leading edges to energise the airflow to ensure it stays attached to the lifting surface for longer. Even an infinite span aerofoil would produce lift-induced drag, without producing vortices. Induced drag does not exist because the drag curve says so... the drag curve shows what is there, not the other way around.

Lots of the stuff I have written above can be pulled apart as well, as I am sure I have oversimplified and misrepresented; and I fail to mention Venturi, Bernoulli, Navier Stokes and Euler...

To quote a NASA website: "The real details of how an object generates lift are very complex and do not lend themselves to simplification." If you really want to understand this fascinating subject, internet forums are not really the right place to go to...

The NASA site a Glenn is a good place to start: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/guided.htm

B.
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