Induced Drag Reduction

by Brandon Malley

Submitted : Fall 2014

A plane stays in the air due to four forces, weight, thrust, lift and drag. They all act accordingly on each other to help the plane fly through the air. To increase the aerodynamics of an aircraft winglets are added at the end of the wings to reduce the drag. I wanted to discover how they work and why they help an airplane slice through the air more efficiently. The true nature of winglets comes down to physics and calculus. The height, angles and design of each winglet must be proportional to each specific plane. Adding winglets is not simply bolting them on at the end of the wings, the entire aircraft must be reinforced to handle to additional weight. I researched the most common winglet designs and obtained the proportions of winglets to the aircraft. For instance, a bigger aircraft would need much bigger winglets to reduce the drag.

I will attempt to demonstrate how winglets reduce the aerodynamic drag by showing a plane with and without winglets. The installment can improve the performance but the following aspects must be taken into consideration. The design must be strongly customized to each specific plane, winglets introduce additional weight, they increase the wing root bending moment, efficiency is proportional to the lift coefficient and they can alter the aerodynamics in other regions of the plane.

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