fairfolio
Saved Projects

Winglets on the Water

CSEF · 2013 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics (Junior Division Only) Honorable_mention Award

Sampson B. Reynolds · Cunha (Manuel F.) Intermediate School, Half Moon Bay, San Mateo County

Overview

Objectives/Goals To determine if attaching a winglet to a rigid wing sail on an Americas Cup 72 would affect the amount of drag on the rigid wing sail. I think that the winglet will decrease the amount of overall drag on the rigid wing sail. As far as i know this hypothesis has never been tested before. Methods/Materials 1. Design and build a wind tunnel out of plywood. 2. Build an Americas Cup style rigid wing sail and a winglet out of Styrafoam 3. Mount the sail on a linear bearing and mount the bearing on the floor of the wind tunnel 4. Hold the winglet at the front of the bearing then time how long it takes to be blown the length of the bearing 5. Repeat this 49 more times and then put the winglet on and repeat it another 50 times Results The final results of my experiment where that winglet wing had more drag than the regular wing. The winglet time ranged from 1.9 to 2.4 seconds with an average of 2.132 and the normal wing ranged from 2.1 to 2.5 seconds and had an average time of 2.332. The higher the number the lower the drag because it had less wind resistance so it took longer. This means that the winglet wing created more of a wind barrier the wind pushed it faster making it have the lower number Conclusions/Discussion The results did not support my hypothesis. In the future I would like to refined the method used to measure the amount of drag to create a more sensitive measure if possible. I would also like to try putting one winglet in the center of the wing and maybe change the shape of the winglet. I believe there is a strong possibility that this hypothesis could be proven true with the correct modifications. If winglets do actually decrease the drag on a rigid wing sail then they may appear on the next Americas cup boats.

Summary statement

To use a wind tunnel to determine if attaching a winglet to the rigid wing sail of an Americas cup 72 will affect the amount of drag on the wing.

Help received

Dad helped use table saw and nail gun; Dad held other side of hot wire knife; Friend held smoke bomb

Awards (1)

  • Honorable Mention

Competition history

  • CSEF 2013 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0125

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