Classic British Flight Sim

Graham

Now there is no need to be spiteful!

AndyG

Spot on Andy.

I have been having a look through "The Complete Book of Fighters" by
William Green & Gordon Swanborough - very interesting facts, & pictures etc.

Claims to be an ensyclo -encicl, oh B****r it -book of every fighter built & flown. Published 1977.

Graham

I believe it had something called a "Laminar Flow Wing"...

Filonian wrote:Spot on Andy.

I have been having a look through "The Complete Book of Fighters" by
William Green & Gordon Swanborough - very interesting facts, & pictures etc.

Claims to be an ensyclo -encicl, oh B****r it -book of every fighter built & flown. Published 1977.

Graham

Another good one (which is the one I use) is "Interceptor" by James Goulding, which is a pretty comprehensive rundown of the RAF single seat fighter; everything from the DH2 to the EAP is included, with some decent 3-views for most of them. Some nice exotica, including a number of the F5/34 projects (which spawned the Hurricane), the Gloster submission is very pretty, almost like a monoplane Gladiator.

Some nice plans of the Hawker P1083 as well, just in case Dave G ever fancied doing another variation on his Hunter!

AndyG

petermcleland wrote:I believe it had something called a "Laminar Flow Wing"...

Think you're right, as did the P-51, although I have a feeling that in reality so called 'laminar flow' aerofoils do experience a fair degree of turbulent flow. In general the wing has a lower t/c ratio, with the thickest point closer to 50% than 25% chord and a sharper LE.

petermcleland wrote:I believe it had something called a "Laminar Flow Wing"...

Supermarine married the Spiteful wing with a new fuselage to make the Jet Spiteful, which became the Attacker.

AndyG

The Spiteful and Seafang were both included in the pack of plans and photos that I sent to a certain Japanese gentleman a few weeks ago.

Martin

Summat may be forthcoming soon then Martin.

He has been unusually quiet of late.

Graham

TobyV wrote:

petermcleland wrote:I believe it had something called a "Laminar Flow Wing"...

Think you're right, as did the P-51, although I have a feeling that in reality so called 'laminar flow' aerofoils do experience a fair degree of turbulent flow. In general the wing has a lower t/c ratio, with the thickest point closer to 50% than 25% chord and a sharper LE.

Yes - there was a rush to adopt the so-called laminar-flow wings in the mid-1940s, followed a couple of years later by their near-abandonment.

The main problem was (and is) that a laminar boundary layer, although giving low drag, easily separates from the aerofoil, which will cause much more drag that an attached turbulent boundary layer would. A lot of research went into causes and cures, and the bottom line was that if you wanted the benefits of laminar flow, you had to (a) make the wing to a very accurate profile, with little or no surface defects (ripples, rivet dimples, paint defects, etc - we're talking hundreths of an inch here), (b) keep it that way in service (eg no groundcrew walking on the wing surface in case they spoiled the profile) and (c) eliminate insect splatter and other environmental 'dings' to the first 50% of the upper surface.

This just wasn't practical for any service aircraft and the idea faded away rapidly. The advent of shockwaves at about the same time period also was a big negative for laminar flow - another disturbance with the potential to cause separation.

However, like most basically-good ideas, it didn't die out altogether, and the culmination of the continuing British research was the design for the A-300, which, by adopting a laminar-flow-wing-like profile (max thickness near 50% chord) together with the latest ideas in transonic Mach drag reduction, invented a near-supercritical wing some time before Dick Whitcombe had formulated his supercritical theory.

Kevin