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Airfoil: Wing Fluid Aerodynamic Force Force Perpendicular Lift Drag

An airfoil is any surface such as a wing, propeller, or hydrofoil that produces lift when moved through a fluid. When air flows over an airfoil, the airfoil is designed to increase the velocity of the airflow above its surface, decreasing pressure and producing lift. There are three main types of drag on an aircraft: friction drag due to viscosity in the boundary layer, form or pressure drag due to changes in air pressure around the aircraft, and induced drag caused by the creation of lift itself. Streamlining an aircraft aims to minimize these drags and improve aerodynamic efficiency and performance.

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Mahmoud Saleh El Kaffas
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93 views3 pages

Airfoil: Wing Fluid Aerodynamic Force Force Perpendicular Lift Drag

An airfoil is any surface such as a wing, propeller, or hydrofoil that produces lift when moved through a fluid. When air flows over an airfoil, the airfoil is designed to increase the velocity of the airflow above its surface, decreasing pressure and producing lift. There are three main types of drag on an aircraft: friction drag due to viscosity in the boundary layer, form or pressure drag due to changes in air pressure around the aircraft, and induced drag caused by the creation of lift itself. Streamlining an aircraft aims to minimize these drags and improve aerodynamic efficiency and performance.

Uploaded by

Mahmoud Saleh El Kaffas
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Airfoil

 An airfoil is the shape of a wing or blade


 An airfoil-shaped body moved through a fluid produces an aerodynamic force.
 Aerodynamic force is the resultant force exerted on a body by the air (or some other gas) in
which the body is immersed, and is due to the relative motion between the body and the fluid.
 The component of this force perpendicular to the direction of motion is called lift. The
component parallel to the direction of motion is called drag.

Lift Force
An airfoil is a device which gets a useful reaction from air moving over its surface. When an airfoil is
moved through the air, it is capable of producing lift. Wings, horizontal tail surfaces, vertical tails
surfaces, and propellers are all examples of airfoils.

Bernoulli's Principle: To understand how lift is produced, we must examine a phenomenon discovered
many years ago by the scientist Bernoulli and later called Bernoulli's Principle: The pressure of a fluid
(liquid or gas) decreases at points where the speed of the fluid increases. In other words, Bernoulli
found that within the same fluid, in this case air, high speed flow is associated with low pressure, and
low speed flow with high pressure. This principle was first used to explain changes in the pressure of
fluid flowing within a pipe whose cross-sectional area varied. In the wide section of the gradually
narrowing pipe, the fluid moves at low speed, producing high pressure. As the pipe narrows it must
contain the same amount of fluid.In this narrow section, the fluid moves at high speed, producing low
pressure.

An important application of this phenomenon is made in giving lift to the wing of an airplane, an airfoil.
The airfoil is designed to increase the velocity of the airflow above its surface, thereby decreasing
pressure above the airfoil.Simultaneously, the impact of the air on the lower surface of the airfoil
increases the pressure below. This combination of pressure decrease above and increase below
produces lift.Probably you have held your flattened hand out of the window of a moving automobile. As
you inclined your hand to the wind, the force of air pushed against it forcing your hand to rise. The
airfoil (in this case, your hand) was deflecting the wind
which, in turn, created an equal and opposite dynamic pressure on the lower surface of the airfoil,
forcing it up and back.The upward component of this force is lift; the backward component is drag.

http://weblab.open.ac.uk/firstflight/forces/

Drag Force
On a flying aircraft, drag is the force working in opposition to the thrust force. Streamlining a body is to
minimize the amount of drag a body produces. It is important that engineers streamline aircraft, in order
to increase the overall aerodynamic efficiency and aircraft performance.

There are essentially three types of drag: friction drag, form or pressure drag, and induced drag.
Each type of drag contributes to the overall drag force.
Friction and Form Drag

Friction drag occurs at the boundary layer. This is the area close to the airfoil of the plane where
the average speed of the airflow is slower than the surrounding air. This "skin" of air is what
slides against the surrounding airflow and causes friction. In the boundary layer, the flow can be
laminar or turbulent. A uniform flow of air, parallel to the airfoil, is the laminar portion of the
boundary layer, found closer to the leading edge. A turbulent portion of the boundary layer, near
the trailing edge, is irregular and disoriented. A boundary layer that is turbulent increases the
friction drag. Somewhere between the leading edge and the trailing edge, the boundary layer
changes from laminar to turbulent. In order to bring down the friction drag, engineers try to delay
this change as much as possible. One way of achieving this is to keep the airfoil as smooth as
possible. The smallest of irregularities, even tiny bugs that hit the airfoil, can have the overall
effect of changing the boundary layer to turbulent sooner.

The viscosity of the fluid is directly related to the friction drag a body experiences when it goes
through it. Although, air has a relatively low viscosity, the friction drag is a significant
contributor to the total drag of an airplane. It becomes even more prominent when the wing area
is relatively large.

Form drag is another major portion of the total drag in most airplanes. This type of drag is
directly proportional to the cross-sectional area of the object traveling through a fluid. To create
a better mental picture, imagine sticking your hand outside the window of your shiny sports car.
If you turn your hand so that your palm is facing the wind, then that is considered as the form or
the pressure drag. The airflow hitting your hand slows right in front of you, then it speeds up as it
passes your hand, and becomes turbulent afterwards. This creates a situation where the air
pressure in front of your hand is higher than the air pressure behind it, leading to a net force
pushing downwind. A force acting perpendicularly to the face of an object produces form drag.

Induced Drag

Finally we come to induced drag, or drag caused by lift. Using the same hand out the window
example, if you slightly tilted your hand so that your palms were facing forward, yet still down,
then you experience some upward force, lift, yet you also feel a drag force. This is the reason
why engineers also call this the drag due to lift.

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