On Jan 29, 10:27*am, flying_monkey wrote:
I saw a glider with the Sinha (sp?) deturbulator tape this last
weekend. *The owner was explaining the theory of how that works, and
it seems to revolve around the turbulent stream hitting exactly at the
location of this tape, which would explain why it works only at that
speed. *I thought about this question just after talking to him: Why
not coat the whole aft 2/3 of the wing with the deturbulator material,
then you would cover all the possible reattachment points? *Of course,
as a scientist, I wonder about the validity of any test where the
proponent says that "You have to take each test individually, not
aggregate them together." *Sounds like anecdotal evidence to me.

But, assuming that this would really work, then you could have what
the owner described as a "induced drag only" wing, and it L/D would
depend only on fuselage drag. *So, a wing like this on a really
streamlined fuselage (Diana?) might see high L/D speeds.

Just my $0.02,
Ed

I share your skepticism - there may in fact be some favorable boundary
layer effects associated with this type of surface treatment - I
recall America's Cup boats used something that seemed similar about a
decade ago (yes, it's a different fluid...). Nevertheless, the idea of
totally eliminating form drag is overreaching by a lot methinks.

I remember Helmut Reichman won the 1978 Worlds in France, flying the
Akaflieg Braunschweig-built SB-11 which had slotless fowler flaps that
could increase the wing area by about 25-30%. The design opted for
improved low-speed performance as the 15M glider had an aspect ratio
of around 17 with the flaps fully deployed. Deploying the flaps took
some cranking I recall. That's all fine for Europe I guess, but this
discussion does raise for me the idea of a glider that uses the same
concept to give you climb comparable to existing gliders with a 10-15
knot higher cruise speed. It could be really interesting out west
where the thermals are strong enough that a few ft/min of lower
minimum sink would be a lot less advantageous than a higher inter-
thermal cruise speed. Now if you could just fit all that mechanism
into a 30:1 aspect-ratio wing with a 12% thickness ratio and still
have room for ballast (can you add Epsom salts to water ballast?).

9B