22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-P2.4

DESIGN OF WINGTIP VORTEX TURBINE

J. Haider
Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan

Keywords: wing tip vortices, induced drag

During lift the pressure difference across upper and lower sides of the aircraft wing, forces the flow of air to curl around the wing tip resulting in wing tip vortices which in turn creates induced drag. Induced drag has been a great problem of all the aircraft and at times it reaches up to 70% of the total drag. The idea of wing tip turbine is to use the energy of the vortices to generate extra power thus reducing induced drag at the same time. However total drag would increase due to profile drag of the turbine. To cater it, this design has been done such that the drag created by turbine in a particular phase should not exceed the induced drag reduced by the turbine. In this way maximum energy is extracted with out paying the penalty of drag. The theoretical study is based upon drag type turbine installed on NACA 2418 airfoil whose specifications bear geometric similarity to the wing of T-37 aircraft. The experimental results are based upon the wind tunnel testing of the scale down model of the assumed wing.

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