The leading edge on the wingsuit in general has the shape of the arm, and this is not very sharp. Laminar airfoils in general have sharper leading edge. Anything but absolutely perfect tailoring, manufacturing, fitting and maintaining of the body position in flight would lead to bends, ripples and wrinkles in fabric that would prevent laminar flow.Ģ. Also, no matter what type of fabric we try to use, since wingsuit is not rigid, we will have huge problem to keep surface very smooth. Therefore, you have to look the complete flying body, which has actually a lot of areas that are causing interference and disturbing the airflow (head, shoulders, rig, arm wing and body attachment, knees, feet, etc.). With its short span wings, wingsuit looks more like space shuttle then like high performance sailplane. Also, we cannot look only arm wings on the wingsuit. Or just look to a side or behind you during the flight…There is infinite number of things you can do during the flight to completely nullify any potential advantage of laminar airfoil. Even if we manage to design and build laminar airfoil suit, you can only, for example, bend you elbows slightly during the flight and the wing will be completely out of shape (and out of performance). In order to function as intended, laminar airfoil geometry has to be designed, manufactured and maintained to a great precision. Each wingsuit flyer is different in shape and size, and maintains slightly different body position in flight. Wingsuits are more like parachutes, semi-rigid airfoils. Wingsuit is typical example of aerodynamic body that is completely unsuitable for the use of laminar airfoils, for number of reasons:ġ. An extreme example were some airplanes that were using laminar airfoils that were not able to sustain level flight in heavy rain, because water on the wings disturbed laminar airfoil and reduced available lift. Also, they require very smooth surface (did you ever wonder why competition sailplanes have high polish surface?), and any disturbance can lead to significant reduction or almost complete loss of performance. They have to be manufactured very carefully and with high degree precision. Also, Burt Rutan is using these airfoils in his designs very often.īut laminar airfoils have also some undesirable characteristics. Laminar airfoils are used for fast airplanes, or on high performance sailplanes. Drag is therefore considerably reduced since the laminar airfoil takes less energy to slide through the air. The effect achieved by this type of wing design is to maintain the laminar flow of air throughout a greater percentage of the chord of the wing and to control the transition point (point at which laminar flow is converted in to turbulent flow). The major and most important difference between the two types of airfoil is this, the thickest part of a laminar wing occurs at 50% chord while in the conventional design the thickest part is at 25% chord. The laminar flow wing is usually thinner than the conventional airfoil, the leading edge is more pointed and its upper and lower surfaces are nearly symmetrical. Laminar flow airfoils were originally developed for the purpose of making an airplane fly faster. An airfoil designed for minimum drag and uninterrupted flow of the boundary layer is called a laminar airfoil. If the smooth flow of air is interrupted over a wing section, turbulence is created which results in a loss of lift and a high degree of drag. Laminar flow is most often found at the front of a streamlined body and is an important factor in flight. Laminar Flow is the smooth, uninterrupted flow of air over the contour of the wings, fuselage, or other parts of an aircraft in flight. As I read here many times word ''laminar'', and as I see that so many times this word is placed in wrong context I would like to provide additional information.
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