Geoff Willis:... We’ve seen wings that bend in one way, flaps that bend in another way, wings that aren’t bonded together. I think we’ve even seen an inflatable wing, which I must say I was very impressed with...

you could do a two piece mold then pull vacum from the inside (bag whre you have foam now and pull to the negivte mold you could then add honey come but id guess that the shap would be pretty strong once its bonded to end plates but what a layup nightmare you could also dislove the foam out of there if you get the right kindR1ceboy32 wrote:well as i said ealier one layer of carbon or fiberglass doesnt have enough stiffness for our needs once you start to add mutiple layers, everything starts to get heavy. as it is now, a layer of carbon is about equal to weight of the foam. And we also have a carbon tube spar running down in the foam that also adds a lot to our strenght which is being redesigned over the summer. Our wing has to be able to support almost 40 pounds at the moment. we do currently use a molding process for the fuse. its essentially made in two halves which are joined later as you said. the materail uses is honeycomb nomex sandwhich between two layers of fiber glass. its about 6 feet long and only weighs a pounds. its pretty incredible. we would use the nomex in our wings but the complex shape prohibts us from doing so. o yea, all the composite work do is cured under vaccum and in an oven.
you can get honey comb to fit the leading edge you might have to use flexi core but tis easily done and you realy dont need to fill the whole wing with it you could do some strips in the flat sectionsR1ceboy32 wrote:well the honeycomb/mold idea doesnt work since there is no way the honeycomb will conform the the curves of the leading edge. the foam isnt there for the shape, its acutally a strucually member so without it our wing has almost no stiffness since we only have 1 layer of composites on it. hollow wings have been tried but we still havent found a way to make it light enough (sub 2 pounds) while still having enough strenght to carry 35+ pounds.
Zac the flow drawn laterally to the wing is inside the wing so it doesn't affect the air going over the wing. If i'm picking up what manchild's putting down.zac510 wrote: Maybe ciro or kilcoo would like to comment, but I believe that would be going against the lateral flow of air across the wing, and thus may be counterproductive.
Thanks M. If you're talking about shape of duct that is out of the question because that is NACA duct used for over 40 years I think, from fighter planes to F1 cars. Its design is optimized to enable intake of air with minimal drag and turbulence.Mikey_s wrote:I like the innovative thinking. I can see a few issues arising though, and I'm typing as I think, so forgive me if I ramble a bit;
1. Should the inlet venturi not be reversed? That way air would be compressed and speeded up, rather than slowed down prior to entering the wing internal.
I don’t think that endplate should be thicker since NACA duct could be applied even on several millimeters thick plate. Also, use of brake-like duct would mean reduction of wing span since duct would extend overall width of rear wing assembly. To make it function well, duct should have to be able to feed wing with more air than what slot would let out. For that reason wing could be divided transversally in two sections but when I've put it originally that whole wing should be fed with air I had in mind positive ram-air effect (air reserve - more air in wing than what slot can consume so shortage never occurs).Mikey_s wrote: 2. In order for the venturi to collect air the Rear wing endplate would have to be thicker than it normally is, adding frontal area and increasing drag... but some sort of scoop, like a brake duct ought to work well.