Thread: Wing dihedral
View Single Post
  #4  
Old March 18th 06, 11:12 AM
Chris Wells Chris Wells is offline
Senior Member
 
First recorded activity by AviationBanter: Oct 2005
Posts: 106
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jose
Ignoring gravity for a moment, you can rotate the diagram any
which way, and the lift vectors will always be normal to the wing, and
will always have a net zero =torque= (and it's torque that would, by
this explanation, return the aircraft to level).
The point I was making is that this is not true. You can rotate the diagram any which way, but the lift vectors won't be the same. I think confusion is caused because you're looking at the diagram head-on, but the plane doesn't fly through the air that way. With dihedral, the AOA on each wing is only equal when they're level.