New Scientist reports “Hang on to the bumps for a smoother flight” which talks about the new technology being used to literally make your flight a “smooth one”.
THE performance-sapping turbulence of air passing over aircraft wings can be suppressed by carefully designed roughness in the surfaces.
So says a team at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in defiance of the conventional wisdom that roughness inevitably promotes turbulence. The team’s experiments could have far-reaching consequences for the aerospace industry, which spends vast amounts to reduce this costly effect.
“Turbulence is associated with increased friction drag, the resistance of a thin body when it slides past slower moving air,” says Luca Brandt, a member of the KTH team. “Delaying turbulence is important to decrease the drag.” Reducing drag would increase fuel efficiency, which would cut airline fuel bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Traditionally, minimizing turbulence has been a matter of “extremely smooth wings”, yet now the opposite is being considered. Rough equals smoother ride.
