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by slavak
1817 days ago
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You're right- there isn't, and it doesn't. In fact a parcel of air moving over the top of the wing will beat its counterpart moving below it to the trailing edge. This[1] video has a very good demonstration of this. (Relevant part begins around 0:25.) So saying that air on top of the wing moves faster, creating a pressure differential and thus lift, is absolutely correct. The problem begins when some people try to come up with an intuitive explanation for _why_ the air would need to speed up. "Because this is the lowest energy state that conserves energy, momentum, and mass" isn't a very satisfying answer; neither is "because this system of PDEs say so"; so they came up with the "equal transit time" explanation, which is simple, intuitive, and completely wrong. Hopefully aeronautical engineers at P&W didn't actually believe that last bit? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqBmdZ-BNig |
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