Winglets Help Planes Lift Off, Save Fuel

"In the airline industry's latest attempt to control soaring fuel costs, strange-looking fins are appearing on the wingtips of passenger jets around the world... The curling wingtips, which can jut as high as 15 feet above the wing, are quickly becoming a familiar sight for air travelers... Winglets are part of a never-ending quest to improve the aerodynamics of planes. One basic principle: longer wings provide more lift. But long wings can get floppy, and make maneuvering among closely packed airport gates a problem. Meanwhile, air currents swirling off the tips of wings create a drag that slows down airplanes and makes the engine work harder. Mother Nature first solved this problem with strong feathers that flip up at the wingtips of soaring birds like eagles. The upturned feathers give the birds more lift and reduce drag. For more than a century, aeronautic engineers unsuccessfully tried to replicate this effect by bolting vertical plates to the end of plane wings. In the late 1970s, National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer Dick Whitcomb tried a new approach, mimicking the wing shape in the fin, thus coining the term winglets. Industry engineers were at first skeptical of the benefits. Plus, fuel prices were dropping and airlines found the savings didn't justify the hefty investment of installing winglets. Some corporate jet makers, such as General Dynamics Corp.'s Gulfstream Aerospace, began using winglets to enhance their planes. In 1985, commercial plane maker Airbus, a joint venture between European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. (EADS), which owns 80% of Airbus, and BAE Systems PLC, began adding tiny devices at the ends of wings that had a similar effect. But the more dramatic winglet approach stalled until Aviation Partners Inc., a small venture made up of retired aeronautic engineers, began tinkering with its own design in the 1990s. The result: a winglet that gradually curves up from the surface of the wing, like the tip of a ski, instead of the abrupt angle of earlier designs. The group teamed up with Boeing in 1999 after convincing the company's engineers that the design could cut fuel use by more than 100,000 gallons per plane each year." (The Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2005; Page B1)

Comments

[Kendrick Brackens]

I want to know wich wing design saves the most fuel.