High Speed Stall

| I suspect wings are useless for 3-D flying .... they are 'stalled' most | of the time. Not much air flowing over them. I suspect also that someone | will build a '3-D'(whatever that is) model that had no wings, a body, | engine, tail(stabilator) and a hook on the bottom to attach it to a | stick to keep it vertical while launching it. Pour on the power and up | you go off the hook. Hover back to the hook and back off the power. | Wierd, I know.

Already made.

It doesn't have the hook, but it's got the rest of what you're talking about ...

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You probably won't have a hard time finding other examples :)

Seriously, even in a 3D plane, the main wing isn't stalled all the time, probably not even most of the time. Just while doing maneuvers. Remove the wing, and it's not a plane anymore ... it's something else.

| Does anyone know if a wing will stall at high speeds(below mach 1) in | level flight assuming the wing dimensions dont change?

Stalling has nothing to do with level flight -- it's only a function of angle of attack. However, a stalled wing tends to not produce much lift (it generally does still produce some lift, however -- people tend to forget this) but instead produces a lot of drag (and this is the real problem.) Given enough power and a properly (or improperly

-- you could force this with a really whacked-out plane) constructed plane, you certainly could have level flight and a stalled wing.

Take your model. Run with it in your hands, nose pointed forward. Not stalled. Now point the nose 80 degrees up. Keep running. Your wing is now stalled, and you've got level `flight'. And unless you can run much faster than me, you're probably not at Mach 1 :)

Reply to
Doug McLaren
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pant, pant pant,.....whew!!!!! get er done.

How many people think about the bottom of the wing contributing to lift?? It cant be all on the top. I dont think water skiis would function.

Reply to
jim breeyear

| How many people think about the bottom of the wing contributing to | lift?? It cant be all on the top. I dont think water skiis would | function.

It's both top and bottom, of course.

Ultimately, what the wing does is deflect air downwards, which produces lift upwards. This also creates drag, more specifically called induced drag. (There's also parasitic drag, which is caused just because the things cause drag as they goes through the air.)

For small angles of attack and reasonable speeds, the total drag created usually is relatively small, but once you start stalling, the drag goes way up and the lift goes down (but generally not to zero.)

Of course, we could go into the whole Bernoulli vs. Newton thing here, but just know this -- both are correct.

In any event, there's lots of information on aerodynamics out there. Here's some good places to start :

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Reply to
Doug McLaren

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