PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Which part of a straight wing stalls first
Old 11th Oct 2016, 15:32
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PDR1
 
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Mordor
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Do your own coursework!

OK, some things to think about:

Look at what the spanwise flow does for the local flow direction, the local effective chord and this the local effective Re - it all flows [sic] from that.

With the swept wing it's more involved because the upper surface spanwise flow component towards the root is opposed by the spanwise component of airspeed. This produces a stagnation point somewhere along the span which is where the stall will commence. Precisely where this point isn't very well defined, so swept wings are prone to dangerously asymmetric stalls - most of the early swept jets were known for nasty low-speed wing-dropping tendencies. The cures for this involved trying to nail the stagnation point to a location - saw/dogtooth leading edges, notches, LE camber-changes etc.

Funny stuff happens with spanwise pressure distributions on swept wings, especially if the AR isn't small. Follow those thoughts to their conclusions and you find the reason for Horten's "bat-tail" feature and the unswept centre-section TE on many/most large jet transports.

€0.12 supplied,

PDR
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