On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 12:13 -0800, Robert Indigo Ellison wrote: > Divorced from reality??
Sorry to hear about your divorce. Such things are sad. The first aircraft with a wing designed with a laminar flow airfoil was the P51. http://www.aviation-history.com/theory/lam-flow.htm So on your planet, the P51 was the first aircraft? Or was it the B24, using this airfoil: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=VINAAAAAEBAJ&dq=1942688 Notice that Mr Davis didn't know that he had designed the first laminar flow airfoil. A laminar flow airfoil doesn't have laminar flow over the trailing edge. The P-51 airfoil could have as much as 60% laminar flow in a wind tunnel (the most ideal environment). A laminar flow airfoil doesn't have laminar flow all the time. Clouds, rain, mud, frost, bug guts, dents from GI boots, anything else that causes surface roughness, flexing under load, upstream turbulence from prop wash, all these mean that the P51 airfoil usually didn't have anything close to 60% laminar flow... The amusing discovery was that there is an advantage to a laminar flow airfoil even when the flow isn't laminar, which is much of the time. And somehow, often with chaotic flow over much of the wing surface, aircraft still fly. River flow is chaotic. That doesn't mean the river is likely to leave its bed and go dancing over the hills. Climate is chaotic. That doesn't mean it isn't predicable. -- Phil Hays <[email protected]> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
