• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

What is the wing apex?

O

OldCrow

Charter Member
Maybe a stupid question, but what is the wing apex?

Is it the leading edge, the center of lift, the wing tip, center ot the MAC, or what?
 
As far as I know, it's the center of lift or more specifically the maximum height of the airfoil relative the the center chord line. Like the apex of a turn or curve.
 
Yeah, I think I agree with you. Funny I couldn't find anything about this on the net, and I usually can find anything.

I notice that the wing_pos_lon in the Aircraft.cfg is usually set by the formula: wing area/wingspan/4.
Or simply, the MAC divided by 4.
 
The reason I think the above formula is flawed though is for example...

A spitfire with clipped wings, will have less wing area and span, which will change the wing_apex_lon(moving it back vs. the CoG), even though it probably would have the same center of lift as the standard elliptical wing wouldn't it?
 
I think this question would be better asked over at Sparks' usual haunt, the SOH Flight Dynamics forum:- http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/forumdisplay.php?f=42

For what it's worth, I was under the impression it was the apex of the wing leading edge, usually the position where the wing root meets the fuselage, but neglecting any fairing. aircraft.cfg includes an entry for the sweep of the leading edge to account for wings which are, er, swept back like most of them are. 25% of MAC back from the leading edge is where the sim expects the centre of lift to be afaik.

Most aircraft have some degree of sweep to their wings, but if anyone's building a Ju-287 flight model I'd love to know how you get on with that bird - wings swept substantially forward!
 
Squiffy said:
As far as I know, it's the center of lift or more specifically the maximum height of the airfoil relative the the center chord line. Like the apex of a turn or curve.
Click to expand...
On second thought, wouldn't this (your description above) be the exact same as the CoG number usually? Usually the MAC minus 1/4 of the total length?

I'm thinking now it's more of the leading edge at center of lift, in relation to the CoG.
 
I thought apex was at the wing root too but methinks me is over simplifying...

As far as forward sweeps, isn't that basically: Less stability= more maneuverability?

...Tho' I'm out of me depth its still quite interesting!:wiggle:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top