fairfolio
Saved Projects

Flight Analysis of a Winglet's Effect on Aircraft Performance Inside a Subsonic Wind Tunnel

CSEF · 2018 Applied Mechanics & Structures

Yiyi Ouyang · Troy High School, Fullerton, Orange County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The goal was to measure lift (via weight) and drag (via Hooke's Law) on wings with varying cant angles in subsonic conditions with a 2-degree angle of attack. Methods/Materials 3-D Printer, Fan, Wooden planks, Powertools, Spring, and scale. I used plywood and the fan to construct a wind tunnel. The 3-D printer fabricated the wing which was tested with a spring and scale. Results The wing with the cant angle of 110 performed the best based on its lift to drag ratio. It had the highest lift to drag ratio with a cant angle of 100 being the next highest. There may have been inconsistencies with the wall effect and thus a margin of error of around 15 degrees can arise. Conclusions/Discussion It seemed that at 110 degrees, the spillover effect of high-pressure wind to low-pressure wind was the least. This means that a cant angle of 110 degrees may be best at conserving oil, increasing mileage, and decreasing wingtip vortices.

Summary statement

I used Hooke's law to measure drag and a scale to measure lift inside a self-constructed wind tunnel.

Help received

My dad cut the wood. I used the drill and constructed the wind tunnel by myself.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2018 Applied Mechanics & Structures · Entry S0322

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google