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From: C. Marin Faure (no email)
Date: Sat Aug 16 2003 - 03:04:40 EDT
From: "Kurt Reno" <>
Subject: TWL: Re: Bernouli effect is not why wings
>Slow airplanes depend upon the Bernoulli
principle to a great deal. Some small planes rely almost entirely upon this
principle and have laminar flow wing designs. The Moonie's and Lancair's
come to mind. Some small planes rely on a combination of Newtonian and
Bernoulli's principles. All the small Censna's Piper's and the likes depend
heavily upon this principle in the design of their wings.
The only problem with this notion is that there are small planes that fly
slow with symetrical wing surfaces. At the risk of sounding like a really
annoying stuck record, the only theory of lift that applies to all wings-
fast, slow, upside down, rightside up, big, little, straight, sweptback,
swept forward, laminar flow, semi-laminar flow, conventional, or in the
case of B-17s in WWII, shot full of holes- is that wings generate lift by
moving air down with the same force as the weight of the plane. They may
move the air down for differing aerodynamic reasons, and Bernouli's theory
is one of them, but in the end, the plane stays up because the air is being
moved down. It's pretty simple actually. What's REALLY complicated, and
to a degree is still not totally understood, is HOW the aerodynamic forces
acting on a wing cause the air to be moved down.
And I hope there's nobody out there that thinks an airplane turns like a
boat because of the rudder...:-) You can fly most airplanes around all day
without the rudder and do just fine. The press is forever describing the
rudder as the thing that turns the airplane, which is really annoying to
those of us in the aviation business. If anyone is curious about this
other greatly misunderstood aspect of flight, I'll be happy to discuss it
off-list. I only bring this up because it's been my experience that a lot
of boaters are also interested in flight, and a lot of pilots (like me) are
interested in boats. There are many similarites, particularly in the
philosophy of how to operate them correctly, but there are just as many
differences.
If you're not particularly interested in flight, I appolgize for the space
taken up by my posts.
_______________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, WA
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