Formula One and laminar flow

liminar flow play a huge part.......I wish I could remember where I had hard/read this, but to increase laminar flow over an airplane wing, they (?) created a perforations on the metal to create a smooth laminare flow over the wings,

It create a form of a vortex that pulled turbulent air through the perferations but not enough to disrupt or effect lift.

Sorry cannot remember details.

Side note: Fly-in at Oshkosh, WI is very interesting.

phoenix911

do you mean :" stall fence's " ? ..stall fences are used to guide the airflow onto the boundary layer. on a specific path...the idea being .. if i guide the flow on to the boundary layer... there should be less chance of that flow bouncing of the boundary layer and causing turbulence between the laminar and boundary layers..

let me see.. do i understand this correctly..

you basically wanna sand blast their car to show `em where they can improve their lift / drag coefficient ?

No, I wish I had the article, because I'm basically reiterating it by memory.......not the best.

My understanding is that it basiclly reduced drag, by creating a smaller micro boundary layer. there is a certain amount of turbulence flow, against the surface, and this reduced the size of the boundry area that would be in turbulent flow.

I not sure where you get sand blast from, but the perforations was not to improve lift but to reduce drag....

I have to look for the article now

oops .. the sand blast was from my simplification of what i thought the thread was about...& i of course selected the incorrect response to attach my response

I understand, I'm still looking for the article, because the perforations would clear up issues with the finish. The more I'm thinking about it, the more there was to this article

ive seen cooling " holes" on hot section blades.. and stall fences.. not sure ive seen ?? ducted air??..louvered to bypass over the leading edge flaps??..

not trying 2b argumentative..

sometimes i'm not as smart as i think i sound..

There was an article in NASA Tech Briefs at least ten years ago where that concept was tried in an effort to reduce the thickness of the boundary layer, hence drag. They found that with the right size holes (very very small), it worked well in the lab but in real life tests, the holes plugged with dust particles so as to produce unbalanced drag across the wings and created some instability.

They had better success with sticking ribblet film on the leading edge of wings, trapping a sort of air cushion that lessened the impact of air as it attacked the wing. It was installed on some commercial planes as a test. They found that after a certain number of hours, the film had to be cleaned of the dirt that accumulated in the sheltered areas behind the ribblet bumps, and that the extra maintenance cost offset the savings with fuel prices of that time. It did decrease drag by about three percent. 3M was mentioned as the manufacture of the film but for years I have been occasionally trying to find a source and would still like to. I haven't contacted 3M directly, but it doesn't show up in their extensive product list.

Yes that's the one, they also found that manufacturing this and maintaining not to be cost effective and it being micro holes.....10 years ago......I thought it was longer.

I do not know what material that was used. And I can't find my sources where I found out of this info...whether it was a tech journal, or magazine.....

phoenix911

My memory only goes back about ten years. Anything further back is all ten years.

You certainly wouldn't want to improve the lift on an F1 car. And sandblasting wouldn't be the brightest thing to do either. The point is to use very, very fine sand to micro-polish everything to reduce the drag coefficient and to visibly pinpoint areas of higher drag and laminar flow break-up.

you're right .. i don't understand your premise.. but you can call your process anything you like... the size of the abrasive withstanding scrutiny.. please note the introduction , by design, of laminar air flow airfoils into production wasn't until the early to late 30's or very early 40's.. b24 and p 51 ..

i recognize that's not a lot of time for data studies to be definitive..

& if i could just FIND that plug for my slide rule...

back that para up & you'll see that the martin wing on the b 24 was , by different " skunk works" , still a laminar flow airfoil......but splitting hairs isn't the point.. or even how well the 1st worked..

IMHO: to optimize the effects of laminar air flow.. the lift drag coefficient of the airfoil.. the complete airfoil ... i. e. the transom ....can't be ignored...what ever cord .. what ever material... what ever part of fluid dynamics....

like my answer or not.. like my opinion or not.. like my use of verbage or not.. or nomenclature ..

as with finishing the side of the vessel.. sanding is done in step's : 80 , 120 , 200, 400 , etc... till the final grade .. 600 or 1500..what ever.. but the key important step... no stage can be skipped, it leaves tell tale signs in the surface and the finish will depict those flaws to even a novice...

So... as to collecting ( any ) fine grit sand.. to supperrrr supperrr dupper fine grit sand.. then applying that to the surface in what ever manor , would in fact , be skipping all the grades between your sand & the surface of the cars finish, comprende?...

& don't miss understand me.. i'm all for finishing the surface of the car to 1500..

i'm just trying to understand the premise here....

resume' not included by design, bio empty by design,

after 40 years , im happy to be retired , not having to worry about who's anatomy is larger ,

Who knew! (obviously you).. GA

Doesn't sound crazy at all. I kinda like it! A simple experiment that could lead to an elegant solution.

I come at the problem from the perspective of sailing racers. Laminar flow in both the sail and the hull. Much slower speeds but the same problem. In the sail, flow is controlled by tension, or the lack thereof at various points or edges of the sail. And it's interesting to the non sailor how many strings we get to pull to achieve max power and smooth flow from the sail. Modern racing sails are made of Mylar laminate for strength and maximum smoothness. (Hold this thought*).

As with the sail, the hull needs to have continuous laminar flow, mostly controlled by the shape of the stern. That's where laminar flow finally separates. The idea being to let this happen as far aft as possible. The best designs 'trick' the flow into acting like there is a longer hull than is the actuality, with separation occurring at he transom. (Back a da boat you lubbers) As far as the surface itself, it's found that the best finish is achieved by burnishing with 320 grit wetordry sandpaper. That does not stop me from using 400 grit on my own boat. I use a graphite/epoxy finish coat. Very slick when wet. Rudders and fin keels are particularly susceptible to flow disruption due to the increased force vectors and short lengths relative the the flow. Designers have tested various trailing edges, and instead of the knife edge one would assume, it was found that relative to the thickness of the foil, a squared off edge worked best.

Now back to that thought*. My idea is to add a layer of Mylar to the foil surface, fire up the fan, and see where your point of separation occurs. This should work both for the foil shape and angle of attack. (?). The other idea was to coat the foil with a viscous substance (like honey) and see where turbulence is disruptive.

Other designers are attempting to reproduce surfaces that mimic the skin of eels, sharks, and whales in an attempt to maintain laminar flow.

Good luck!

yes , exactly... & what would a finish to 1500 do to the flow rate?.....

& the concept of " lufting " is exactly the visual.... 2b avoided at all cost , any skipper will tell you that...

Luffing, or that backward curve of the sail occurs at the point where the angle of attack is just a bit too shallow. Idealy the sail is trimmed to where luffing is softly, occuring infrequently. This it the point the helmsman steers for when the call is "F^#k the course, sail for speed". Spinnakers are best set when there is a luff near the top of the leading edge. I wonder if this could be incorporated into the leading edge of a ridgid foil? Humm

beam me up Scotty this planets fracked up beyond all recognition...

acting as leading leadge flaps......

yes.. the sail luffing.. is the visual reference from where the airlow skips of the boundary layer... pressure removed from the " sheet" .. it collapses..ie all lift is lost..chances are good the helmsman " falls off" slightly to recapture the wind...in a race that means cutting across your line.. seconds , maybe yards lost .. most certainly time lost...

laminar air flow is directly related to the airfoils performance... = lift / drag coefficient..

Designers have tested various trailing edges, and instead of the knife edge one would assume, it was found that relative to the thickness of the foil, a squared off edge worked best.

Your correct. I have worked on the Alpha Prototype of the MK V Secial Operations Craft for the Navy Seals.

And the edges on the chimes had to be squared sharp so that the water flows off them. This worked the best

Very interesting comments. Laminar flow is extremely touchy, and it is only amplified when applied to liquids. I found this example of how tiny surface imperfections ruin laminar flow:

"In the fifties this was dramatically shown in a photograph of the top of a sailplane wing (in-flight) that had dew on it. A few tiny seeds had landed on forward area the wing while on the ground. In flight these seeds, tiny though they were, reached through the laminar layer and caused micro-turbulence causing the dew to be blown dried in an expanding vee shaped area down stream of each tiny seed."

Your idea of applying mylar to the hull to identify boundary separation is interesting, but the mylar itself may be changing the hull's surface conditions and give you slightly incorrect results. Still, it can't hurt to try it. Same thing with the honey. Sounds weird, but what do you have to loose, some honey? In airplane design, the difference between conventional and laminar flow airfoils is that the thickest part of a laminar wing occurs at 50% chord while in the conventional design the thickest part is at 25% chord. For you, that would mean that the widest part of the hull would be further back towards the transom, but the percentages would probably be different. As for the finish, it seems logical that using 400 grit paper would have to improve drag co-efficient and laminar flow. It would also seem logical that if you used 600, 800, 1200, 1500 etc. grit it would only get smoother and more slippery. And doesn't it make sense to use a 5 micron abrasive, like filtered silica sand, to polish the surface as much as possible? In your case, you could pour a couple of tons of it into the water of one of those continuous flow tanks that hull builders use and let it run for a week to see if it makes the hull smoother. And, you could hook up one of those super accurate digital scales I got off ebay for $11 to see if it reduces drag. No matter how smooth a surface looks, when you look at it under a microsope it will eventually look like the surface of the moon. As far as reproducing the skin of eels, sharks, and whales, read one of my previous posts if you haven't already:

Fish shaped crankshaft counterweights

Good luck to you, too, and don't mind those other people. What ideas do they have?

BTW - whatever happened to the turbo sail that Jacues Cousteau was developing:

Jacques Costeau

Iz

"..... As for the finish... " Yup, It would get smoother and slicker to the touch. But apparently the effect on laminar flow is negligible. Beginning at the molecular level, the liquid (water/air) adheres to the surface until it progressively speeds up in relation to the surface. This acceleration doesn't happen until it's well past the craters and rills of a 320 grit finish. And you're right about something as small as a tiny seed affecting the entire surface, but look at the scale. That seed has the same effect as using 20 grit paper. I expect that as speeds get higher, smoother is better. Waxing the surface should do it.

More important than going to ultrafine finish is fairing the foil to eliminate bumps and hollows. CAD/CAM programs ensure that the molds are fair, but depending on layup and mfg., the only way to fair a surface is with a long-board, elbow grease, and progressively finer abrasives. Before all that was the use of battens, chisels, and planes.

If you get to trying out the Mylar on the concave side of your foiler, try it with the film extending beyond the trailing edge first. Then keep cutting it back until it is well up onto the wing. That should help with optimum shape and angle of attack. Take photos.

Good luck. Carl

Changing the designed and tested materials of the original aerodynamic surface, by adding an additional layer of different material to improve the aerodynamics of the original surface, improves NOTHING. All of the aircraft's aerodynamic flight characteristics are now changed. The weight has changed, airflow has changed, the aircraft's center of gravity has changed, etc., etc.

The taping of one inch pieces of yarn all over the surface of race cars was and still is used to visualize air flow across their surfaces. Two dollars for a ball of yarn and a roll of tape ('60's prices) and a car following the race car around the track with a camera can produce a rudimentary "wind tunnel" study.

yes it was for visual effect only. they use sensors to read what actually is going on.

In areas of laminar flow, the yarn lays flat and shows the direction of flow. At the point where turbulence develops, the yarn flutters. Reconfiguring the surface by re-contouring or adding clay as necessary to produce as close to desired flow patterns as possible, like toward a ground effect element or NACA duct, prior to (or instead of depending funding available) renting a wind tunnel, was common. It reduced the cost and allowed more effective use of pressure, drag and lift instrumentation and smoke generators. In the late '80's, when Porsche attempted to enter the IMSA prototype series, I got a chance to "inspect" a body shell that was fitted out for wind tunnel testing. The entire bottom surface was perforated and tubing installed in a 1" X 1" matrix in order to determine the pressure gradient across the bottom and prove various ground effect theories.

Before you start speculating about laminar flow, I urge you to study boundary layer phenomenon first.

My vortex generators are used on more canard aircraft worldwide than all others combined. I created that market in 1984 specifically for Burt Rutan's canards. They also have been used on more Formula cars than I care to count and the trend has spread dramatically to other applications, even to speed skaters!

I think I can say with some confidence that without an understanding of how energy in the boundary layer affects laminar flow, no hypothesis about sand blasting will get you anything from an aerodynamicist other than a stifled yawn.

If you don't hear them talking about laminar flow in F1, it's because it is so fundamental a concern in drag reduction as to not need annunciation.

L.J.

Thank you. Finally. I was beginning to wonder if anyone on this forum understood the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on aero in F1. Or that, every team (including Force India) has multiple aerodynamicist well versed in computational fluid dynamics. "Advanced" fighter aircraft are in the dark-ages compared to modern F1 cars.

IMVHO, F1 is the tip of the sword of human technical achievement. I can think of no other example on Earth where the technology is driven so furiously. Seriously, if you let your design remain constant for more than a month, you can no longer expect to be competitive.

Compare that to how long ago the design was completed on the Joint Strike Fighter.

Sorry fellers, (I know I'm going to get slammed for this) an F1 car ain't no boat hull.

-A-

-A- Wrote: "Thank you. Finally. I was beginning to wonder if anyone on this forum understood . . . ."

Thank You!

Unfortunately, your analogy about F1 being the "tip of the sword" is painfully appropriate for I believe that the sport is throwing itself on its own sword.

As a designer in one of the most adventurous research programs extant, I get to play with advanced engineering concepts all the time. And, I do love it so!

However, as a Forumula One fan for over 50 years and a brief stint as a crew member of Robert Walker's F-1 team (Striling Moss, et al), I see the current insane preoccupation with technology as the ruination of what was once an exciting gentleman's sport.

It is now dominated by the car companies and Bernie Ecclestone and used as a marketing instrument in developing nations which the auto goliaths see as the next venue for car sales.

Last year David Coultard retired as the Old Man of the F1 drivers and now Rubens Barrichello has inherited that mantel. He's 37 years old! Old my foot!

The greatest driver ever in F1 is not Michael Schoemacher but Juan Manuel Fangio who did not begin his F1 career until well into his 50's!

The current infatuation with the fast reflexes of younger drivers is a demonstration of how technology makes demands inconsistent with the sport.

Fast reflexes, while valuable, are not a substitute for experience and judgement. If it were up to me, I'd banish aerodynamic devices completely and revert the body shapes to those of the 60's. It would slow things down, reduce costs dramatically, extend the usable driving life of the older drivers and make things safer for spectators and drivers alike.

These are no longer cars but emasculated airplanes who operate continuously in the transitional domain that is the riskiest environment in flying. Landing and taking off are where most bad things happen and as an experienced pilot and manufacture of aviation components, I'm in a position to know.

Combine a ban on aero devices with 6 liter engines based on production blocks and you'd lower costs even more. We'd also have sounds resemblling monsters in Jurrasic Park instead of annoying high reving mosquitos.

Enough of my rant but after 50 years of passionate affection with that sport, I feel I've earned the right to bitch some.

L.J.

yes .. not on the ground , not in the air...the distance from wing tip to wing tip is know as "ground effect "..i know the book says wing in ground effect......when the craft is in that transition.. mistakes are amplified , no doubt.

the condition you point out is across the board...

thats ok, an F1 is no jet fighter.

i say, lets make `em remotely controlled and hang aim 7's off of every space availaible...gives speed racer a purpose in life

It might not be the same flow pattern, but if you suspended the particulate in a fluid like water, and pumped that at high velocity past the metal form, would you not have the same effect? Plus, it would simplify the recycling of the abrasive. you could put the object in a venturi, so the accelerated flow does more abrading, and the use inline mixer vanes in the slower return, to keep the particulate in suspension... I dunno. I guess that leaves the pump as the difficult part, but maybe if you used a tesla turbine, it would survive, at least long enough to perform the testing. ?

Chris

ExtrudeHone works this way, using a more viscous liquid. See http://www.extrudehone.com/

great link!

Lets all take a day off and go fishing. Notice the shape of the fish? Notice the shape of the little islands in the middle of the stream? Lets take that fish to the little island and cook it. Notice the smoke as it rises through the trees? Flow is flow. It's the viscosity of the fluid that changes.

Laminar Flow... Does this have anything to do with cake & a Chocolate fountain???

wasnt that a french movie a few years back ?

Kind of an interesting concept as I understand it. You want to use an ultra fine abrasive to highlite the spots where airflow breaks into turbulent flow and other points which are drag producers. This might be a good thing at max speed but F1 cars spend most of their time far below max speed such as in enteries to corners etc. If you dseign for least drag you may end up loosing down force and killing your corner speed. Good luck, sounds like a cool experiment. Maybe one of the big F1 teams will fund it.

When you embed a denser substance (grit) in a fluid, every time the fluid changes direction the denser objects continue on their original course for a bit - you can think of it as being centrifuged out. Look at some pictures of the Howmet gas turbine powered racing sports car of the late 1960s (http://images29.fotki.com/v1010/photos/1/11926/5292375/e_Howmet_GasTurbine_Dv07AI_004-vi.jpg) and you will see an egg shaped thing on the roof in front of the air intake - this was intended to centrifuge out the grit and avoid it entering the gas turbine. In the same way the flies are centrifuged out of the airstream and impact your car windscreen, while the air goes up and over the car.

So blasting your car or boat with grit filled fluid will simply reveal changes in flow direction: it will tell you nothing about laminar flow and it will not selectively polish the parts that need polishing.

I like the idea!

btw

Bumpy whale fins set to spark a revolution in aerodynamics

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/whale-idea-marine-applications-21783.html

there is still lot to learn

Gergo

kewl

Oh Boy. This is going to change a lot of things. I wonder if the leading edge of keels and rudders could have a straight edge with the tubercles just aft. To prevent snags from lines and weeds.

Thanks Gergo, Carl

"Bumpy whale fins set to spark a revolution in aerodynamics"

This is hardly a new disicovery.

More than 20 years have passed since marine engineers built a doppled skin and covered a section of a submarine hull. They wanted to find out why the Dolphin was so fast on such small amounts of energy.

The doppled surface of an ordinary golf ball uses the exact same principle.

In both instances, laminar flow is maintained and power robbing turbulence avoided by putting energy into the boundary layer.

Vortex generators do precisely the same thing as I discussed earlier.

L.J.

If a textured surface improves ship hull performance, and this has been well known for 20 years, why is every boat and ship I see really smooth?

cost, maintenance and aesthetics.

Surfaces types enter the market through things like the "America's Cup". Where performance carry's more weight...........so to speak.......and maybe the new surfaces adds weight that counters the new surface performances.

phoenix911

The users of oil tankers and other cargo ships are about as keen as you can get to extract the maximum of performance and minimum of running costs so if it worked surely they would find a low cost way to add it, such as an adhesive plastic film?

On a naval vessel a either a 1 mil or 6 mil (been over 15 years) over coat thickness would increase draft by 2". Not a good thing.

"On a naval vessel a either a 1 mil or 6 mil (been over 15 years) over coat thickness would increase draft by 2"."

This must refer to some specific material for overcoating, one with a high density. If we imagine a material with a specific gravity of 1 (i.e., density = to water) the increased volume of the hull will be matched by the increased mass, and no change in draft will occur. If the density is less than that of water, the hull should float higher because the increased displacement will be greater than the increased mass. This assumes that we only overcoat the exterior of the hull below the waterline; material above it will contribute to mass but not displacement.

Yes, very dense overcoating do to base material. Including the paint.

The over coating was to protect the hull not only from the sea, but also from the environments, (Sun, rain.... most the U.V. though)

That is why Q.C. in the paint shop was critical.

and the S.G. was above 1.0, Also being in the salt water S.G. of the water was higher, about 1.15 or so, It was well above that. And the coatings was total hull

When this was first told to me, my reaction was disbelief...but only breifly.

On a ship with a prismatic coefficient of 1 (i.e., shaped like a shoebox) of 400' loa, 100' beam, 10' draft, the displacement would be 25,600,000 lbs in fresh water. A coating .006" (.006/12 feet) thick would be .5 cu ft per 1000 square feet of surface. So this boat, with 50,000 sq ft underwater, would require 25 cu ft of coating. If this coating had a sg of 3 (as it would if it were about 33% copper) then it would weigh about 192 lb per cu ft, but this would be offest by 64 lb of buoyancy, for a net addional load of 128 lb. 25 x 128 is 3200 lb. 4800/25,600,000 would increase the draft by a factor of .000125. This, times 120 inches, would be .015 inches.

Well-reasoned; a Good Answer. It has already been stated that the entire hull was to be overcoated, rather than just the portion underwater, but that is FAR from adequate to make up the difference.

I wonder if perhaps the coating was to be applied to every surface, inside and out. At s.g. = 3, that means 2222 cubic feet of coating, or enough to cover 4,444,000 square feet, must be added to sink the hull another 2 inches. Plan-view area is 400 x 100 = 40,000 square feet, so the total area of decks, bulkheads, superstructure, interior walls, ductwork and everything else would need to be about 111 times as great; even allowing for everything being double-sided and with a double hull, this seems out of range. Changing the prismatic coefficient might help a bit by reducing additional displacement and adding area above the waterline for more decks and structures, but it seems like too much to overcome.

The Pressure Type airfoils develeoped by NACA in the past induced turbulence deliberately as it was known even back then that by maintaining some level of energy in the boundary layer, there was less likely a seperation of the airflow.

While the turbulence of the Pressure Type airfoil was created at the expense of some drag, it was a small penalty to pay for the benefits gained. Highly turbulent, non laminar flow causes a considerable increase in drag. So, by keeping the boundary layer attached, the result was more speed.

When the users of Rutan designed canards encountered loss of lift in the rain, one partial cure was to lightly sand the top surface of the canard about 50% of chord. It was not as effective as the use of delta shapoed vortex generators but the fix had been proven by European glider competition pilots.

In this instance. sanding the surface of the wing inhibited or delayed the disruption of the laminar flow by water. This suggests that your theory about the benefits of making a surface smoother by sand blasting is not always beneficial.

If there is some way to impart energy into an otherwise stagnant boundary layer, you can have everything from water to dead bugs disrupting the flow but it will still stay attached and the laminar flow maintained far downstream. . . . . . so long as there is energy in the boundary layer, even at high angles of attack.

L.J.

Wow. First of all, thanks for all the replies, I really appreciate the time and effort put into them and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them all. This is probably the most informed collection of people discussing this subject on the internet in the world. I understand the principles presented by everyone, and I'm certainly not discrediting any of them, but personally I would just like to try the idea and see if it works. One thing I learned after 4 semester of Calculus is that there is a difference between Math and the real world. There is no such thing as a 2 by 4 in the real world, it's always + or - some tiny fraction of an inch. The point is that theoretical mathematics is certainly useful, but it is not always the best way to solve a problem, and it is certainly not the fastest or cheapest. Burt Rutan seems to share this approach; science is useful and necessary, but the truth is that he didn't really know positively whether Spaceship One was going to succeed. And, he could have studied it theoretically for years and years without knowing absolutely that there would be no possible way for it to fail; there are too many variables in the real world. He just did it, and it worked. Barely. To be honest, my main interest is whether there would be some way to make money with this idea. If you measured the aerodynamic drag of something and then measured it after a week of blowing 5 micron sand on it, you would know whether the idea works. Then, you could probably charge someone for this service. Again, thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate and enjoy reading them.

Burt Rutan

I agree with you on all your points. Math is math and the real world is the real world. And that this is a great collection of minds on CR4.

Now I've been wondering if you are really going to just polish. Or will it work like the grand canyon and will the turbulence create eddies, in other words holes. I know that you are not going to do this as long as the grand canyon but you will have to be in long enough to as you say polish the surface. If you are in long enough to remove enough material that the surface imperfections are smoothed out, wouldn't it also be long enough to cause damage. And what about the trailing edges won't there have to be turbulence on the trailing edges and won't they get eaten away?

Good luck with your idea I hope you make it work. Try it out on a small scale like a soap box Derby car or even a little pine wood derby car. You know those parents can be pretty darn competitive that could be your money maker.

Exactly my thoughts on this subject! Introducing ANY kind of abrasive into the airstream over an aerodynamic surface, in an effort to "polish" the surface, is ABSURD! If one hasn't noticed, all commecial aircraft have an, "Abrasive strip" (usually polished aluminum) on the L/E of the wing to combat damage FROM abrasive airborn particles. This is also why many external aircraft components (Such as radomes) have an, "Errosion coating" (A coating system/method of applying multiple layers of materials, usually having elastomeric properties.) applied to the aerodynamic surface. As an engineer, I know this for a fact, because I've personally worked on the radomes installed on the FA/16 and FA/18 and those radomes have an errosion coating. Trust me, these errosion coatings are subjected to EXTREME conditions (below freezing to +250 F.), types of abrasives (Rain, snow, hail, metal B.B.'s, sand, etc.) and at different velocities. Abrasives in the airstream, over time, errodes the surfaces the airstream flows over, which changes the aerodynamic profile of the lifting body. Exactly the same reason there are, "De-icing", systems on aircraft wings. Too much ice on the L/E changes the wing profile, thereby decreasing it's lift capability.

You could use the dust from the guys that cut tile for a living, CAUtION: Wear Personal protective Equipment (gear) while using this product. DO NOT Breath this dust in. It will take up residence in your body. SýnEn

As there are many participants in this thread knowledgeable with aerodynamics, you will be a good tough crowd to ask a few questions.

I've come up with an idea for a roadable aircraft. (13 images here). Tthe basic idea is that there are many airfoils, either staggered vertically, or a few that are serial. This helps the idea of keeping the vehicle within the 100" restricition for the road, but is there any reason it won't develop lift? Will the turbulence from leading wings interfere too much with the lift for the rear surfaces? What kind of lift my be expected on the airfoil shaped pontoons?

Thanks,

Chris

chrisg288:

Reminds me of a project....was not on land but water.

When I was working in the shipyard in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin...before it closed down and turn into a marina.

One of the development project we did was one called Flarecraft....resembled something batman would have.

Kinda a hybrid of boat/airplane offspring.

Heres why Aerodynamics are applied land, air or sea

Here's a link.

http://www.marinetalk.com/articles-marine-companies/art/Flarecraft-xxx00065349TU.html

phoenix911