Comments on: A Twist on Wing Design

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 18:18:30 +0000

Things such as the Coanda Effect and wingtip vortex dragging have a profound (and usually unacknowledged) effect on lift.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 10:00:50 +0000

The Bernoulli explanation of lift is not actually different than the Newton/reaction explanation, though they appear superficially different.

If there’s a pressure difference, air will be forced downward, and if air is forced downward without a pre-existing pressure difference, it will cause an overpressure in the region it’s being forced down. Empirically they will look identical…as far as I know, anyway.

I tried his ‘blow on paper’ experiment and got the opposite to the claimed result.

By: Slovenian Guest

Slovenian Guest — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 19:19:19 +0000

Speaking of wings, from howwingswork.pdf by Dr. Holger Babinsky: "The popular explanation of lift is common, quick, sounds logical and gives the correct answer, yet also introduces misconceptions, uses a nonsensical physical argument and misleadingly invokes Bernoulli’s equation. A simple analysis of pressure gradients and the curvature of streamlines is presented here to give a more correct explanation of lift." He also has a poorly filmed lecture on YouTube.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 15:39:50 +0000

They are evolving toward feathers! Cool!

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 13:29:33 +0000

The Wright brothers called it “wing warping”, and it was how the original Flyer was controlled. Glenn Curtiss invented the aileron, which proved more useful. The MIT team carries wing warping further than the Wrights. It will be interesting to see if it succeeds commercially or militarily.