Preliminary investigation on the effects of folding wingtips on the aerodynamics characteristics of flexible aircraft

Abstract

One of the major challenges in the Aviation Industry is to improve aircraft fuel efficiency and reduction of drag. Many types of winglets have been designed and their significance in reducing the drag has been published. A new innovation is going to be published by Boeing in 2020 – ‘Foldable Wingtips’. Till now the winglets are fixed in an aircraft upwards, this idea is to fold the winglets to any angle at different Angle of attack. The pilot scale model had been designed based on the existing specifications and tested for the various angle of attack in the subsonic semi-automated wind tunnel. In addition a series of test done at a different angle of attack from −15 degrees to + 15 degrees to measure the efficiency of the foldable winglets. All test performed at the constant pitot velocity without varying the rpm of the engine. This takes up the idea to investigate the Aerodynamic effects of the Foldable wingtips.

KEYWORDS:

• Three component balance
• BNC connector
• forces
• moments
• winglets
• wind tunnel

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.