INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW OVER FINITE WINGS The one who has most carefully watched the soaring birds of prey sees man with wings and the faculty of using them. James Means, Editor of the Aeronautical Annual, 1895 RODUCTION: DOWNWASH AND INDUCED DRaG In Chapter 4 we discussed the properties of airfoils, which are the same as the proper ties of a wing of infinite span; indeed, airfoil data are frequently denoted as “infinite wing” data. However, al real airplanes have wings of finite span, and the purpose of the present chapter is to apply our knowledge of airfoil properties to the analysis of such finite wings. This is the second step in Prandk’s philosophy of wing theory, as described in Section 4.1. You should review Section 4.1 before proceeding further. Question: Why are the aerodynamic characteristics of a finite Wing any different from the properties of its airfoil sections? Indeed, an airfoil is simply a section of a ‘wing, and at first thought, you might expect the wing to behave exactly the same as the airfoil. However, as studied in Chapter 4, the flow over an airfoil is two-dimensional. In contrast, a finite wing is a three-dimensional body, and consequently the flow over the finite wing is three-dimensional; that is, there is a component of flow in the spanwise direction, To see this more clearly, examine Figure 5.1, which gives the top and front views of a finite wing, The physical mechanism for generating lift on the wing is the existence of a high pressure on the bottom surface and a low pressure 351FUNDAMENTALS OF AERODYNAMICS, Streamtine over the top surface I ‘Streamline over the bottom surface “- ‘Top view (planter) Froat High pressure Finite wing. In this figure, the curvature of the seomlines over the top and bottom of the wing is exaggerated for clarity. on the top surface. The net imbalance of the pressure distribution creates the lift, as discussed in Section 1.5. However, as a by-product of this pressure imbalance, the flow near the wing tips tends to curl around the tips, being forced from the high- pressure region just underneath the tips to the low-pressure region on top. This flow around the wing tips is shown in the front view of the wing in Figure 5.1. As a result, on the top surface of the wing, there is generally a spanwise component of flow from the tip toward the wing root, causing the streamlines over the top surface to bend toward the root, as sketched on the top view shown in Figure 5.1. Similarly, on the bottom surface of the wing, there is generally a spanwise component of flow from the root toward the tip, causing the streamlines over the bottom surface to bend toward the tip, Clearly, the flow over the finite wing is three-dimensional, and therefore you ‘would expect the overall aerodynamic properties of such a wing to differ from those of its airfoil sections. The tendency for the flow to “leak” around the wing tips has another important effect on the aerodynamics of the wing. This flow establishes a circulatory motion that trails downstream of the wing; that is, a trailing vortex is created at each wing tip. These wing-tip vortices are sketched in Figure 5.2 and are illustrated in Figure 5.3. The tip vortices are essentially weak “tornadoes” that trail downstream of the finite wing. (For large airplanes such as a Boeing 747, these tip vortices can be powerfulINCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW OVER FINITE WINGS 353 Figure 5.2 Schematic of wingtip vortices. igure 5.3. Wingtip vortices from 0 rectangular wing, The wing is in o smoke tunnel, where individual streamtubes are made visible by means of smoke filaments |Source: Head, M. R., in Flow Visualization I, W. Meczkirch (Ed, Hemisphere Publishing Co., New York, 1982, pp. 399-403, Also available in Van Dyke, Milton, An Album of Fluid Motion, The Parabolic Press, Stanford, CA, 1982.) enough to cause light airplanes following too closely to go out of control. Such accidents have occurred, and this is one reason for large spacings between aircraft landing or taking off consecutively at airports.) These wing-tip vortices downstream of the wing induce a small downward component of air velocity in the neighborhood