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Altitude (ft) 0 621 7000 504 14000 404 21000 320 28000 250 35000 193
Lift (lbs) 52 43 35 28 22 17
Drag (lbs)
Inputs: Velocity=100mph Angle of Attack=0 Span=20ft Wing Chord=5ft Cessna 2412 Conclusion: As altitude increases, lift and drag decrease nonlinearly, or exponentially. (Air density and altitude have a nonlinear relationship, so even though lift and drag have a linear relationship with density, it does not with altitude.) Lift is always higher than drag, which is good if we are flying. This makes sense because as altitude increases, pressure decreases, making our lift and drag decrease.
7000
28000
35000
Velocity (mph) 0 50 100 150 200 0 155 621 1398 2486 0 13 52 115 200
Lift (lbs)
Drag (lbs)
Inputs: Cessna 2412 Velocity=100mph Altitude=0ft Span=20ft Wing Chord=5ft Conclusion: As air velocity increases, lift and drag both increases exponentially. This makes sense because velocity is squared in the lift and drag equation. *As altitude increased, temperature decreased and then leveled out at -70C.
Lift/drag (lbs)
50
150
200
Lift and Drag vs. Angle of Attack Conclusion: Lift increases with angle of attack until the plane stalls. When the plane stalls, lift and drag decrease. This happens at around 15, which makes sense because that is where most planes stall. Stall occurs when air separates from the wing. Drag has a similar relationship with angle of attack, except it increases with negative angle of attack up to a certain point. Coefficients vs. Angle of Attack Conclusion: The related coefficients have the same relationship with angle of attack. This makes sense because lift and drag have a direct variation with their coefficients.
Lift vs. Wing Area Conclusion: Lift and drag have a positive linear correlation with wing area and with air density. We expected this because in the lift and drag equations, the area/density are on the opposite side of the equation from the lift/drag and they are not raised to any power. When wing area or density is equal to zero, our lift is also zero, so our graph starts at the origin. This is different from our angle of attack vs. lift graph because even at a 0 angle of attack, we have some lift if we have velocity. Note: Altitude did NOT have a linear relationship with lift/drag, but air density does. This is because air density and altitude do not have a linear relationship to one another.
13
16
20
10 20 30 40
0.034665 0.040425 0.041301 0.031533 0.138661 0.1617 0.165204 0.126133 0.311987 0.363825 0.371709 0.283798 0.554643 0.646801 0.660816 0.50453
Lift
0.7 0.6 0.5 Lift (lbs) 0.4 0.3 0.2 Air Velocity 0.1 0 0 5 7 10 40 mph 30 mph 20 mph 13 16 10 mph 20
10 20 30 40
DRAG (lbs) Angle of Attack 7 10 13 0.003291 0.005335 0.007459 0.013165 0.021341 0.029834 0.029622 0.048016 0.067127 0.052661 0.085362 0.119338
Velocity (mph)
Drag
0.14 0.12 0.1 Drag (lbs) 0.08 0.06 0.04 30 mph 0 5 7 20 mph 10 13 16 10 mph 20 Air Velocity 0.02 0 40 mph
Conclusion: As we increase velocity, lift and drag increase. This is because, as velocity increases, more air pushes up on the wings every second. As angle of attack increases, lift and drag increase until about 15-16. Then, lift and drag begin to decrease again. This makes sense because most planes stall at 1520.
0.8
Lift (lbs)
0.6
0.4
0.2
10 degrees angle
Conclusion: As the plane's angle of attack increases, the lift and drag both increase until a certain point. At about 20 degrees, the drag becomes higher than the lift at times, which means a plane cannot fly. Therefore, the ideal angle of attack is about 10 degrees, since the lift for zero degrees isn't very high. As seen in the graph, the lines of the angles for which a plane stalls are wobbly lines. The highest velocity could only be 75 because then the air is being forced and the air foil is blocking the passage of the air through the wind tunnel. As velocity goes up, lift goes up which is what we expected. The lift levels out in the wind tunnel (not the real world) because at higher velocities, air deflects off the top of the wind tunnel, which nullifies some of the lift.
1.000000
0.600000
0.400000
0.200000
10 degrees angle
Conclusion: Drag keeps increasing exponentially. The drag for 20 and 25 is wobbly because, at those angles, the plane stalls. These results are exactly what we expected from our calculations because of the way drag is measured in the wind tunnel. Because the drag is directly measured by the air velocity acting on it, the drag is the same as our calculations. Judging from the amount and stability of drag, the ideal angle of attack is about 10 -15 .
Conclusion: It is better to have a higher lift to drag ratio because the overall lift will be higher than the overall drag. The graph shows that the highest lift to drag ratio occurs at zero degrees at around 25 miles per hour. However, at higher velocities, the lift to drag ratio for zero degrees goes below that of ten degrees and fifteen degrees. Ten degrees is the angle with the highest consistent lift to drag ratio. Therefore, the most efficient angle of attack is around ten degrees. Fifteen degrees is the next most efficient.