Talk:Wingtip device

Dr. Sighard Hoerner
ADinkelacker 16:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC) Dr. Sighard Hoerner is also a pioneer in this field. He published in 1952.  and 

747 assignment
i am doing an assignment at college please can i have some information on the 747-400 i.e. surface area, controls, speeds, and altitudes
 * I should try Boeing_747 for starters. -- Solipsist 09:55, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Wingtip devices (move)
I would like to suggest renaming this article to Wingtip device and include raked wingtips and wingtip fences, which are all intended to fulfill the same purpose. &mdash;Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 17:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think raked wingtip should be merged in here and the result be moved to Wingtip device. Formal CFV. &mdash;Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 18:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Winglets are not only at an upwards angle
i will try to find pictures of this as i have seen several aircraft here with winglets going in a downward direction most commonly on small high wing single engine type aircraft like small cessnas would anyone like to explain what the difference is or if this still counts as a winglet?
 * No, this will be called a wing fence, and can be found on the A320 series (A318-A321) and MD-11.
 * DeepSpace 08:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * As is now noted in the article, a wingtip fence (which is what you were referring on the A320) is not the same as a wing fence. The MD-11 uses a conventional winglet. &mdash;Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 15:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Accident
Please someone link this article to the article of the GOL Accident in Brazil, a frontal colision betwen a 737-800 and a Embraer Legacy that the winglet of one damaged the other aircraft. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.23.96.2 (talk • contribs) 01:58, 7 October 2006.
 * To be honest I don't think it would be appropriate to link from here to Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907. Whilst it looks like one of the planes lost its winglet in the collision (the pictures are interesting), this disaster doesn't appear to have anything to do with winglets directly. Its really just looks like a mid air collision in which the winglet of one was lost because, but perhaps only because it was on an extremity. If it could be shown that the Boeing plane crashed because the Embraer's wingtip cut through vital systems and this wouldn't have happened if planes didn't have winglets, then there would be a close link - but that seems unlikely. In the meantime a link from mid air collision might be relevant - ah but its already there. -- Solipsist 04:12, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The winglets decided the collision - the Legacy winglet tore into the 737 wing and the 737 winglet hit the Legacy horizontal stabilizer. The 737 crashed and the Legacy landed. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:34, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Awkward wording
Just noting that it might be best to re-word the second paragraph, as it is sort of awkward in its current form.

Move/example photos
Obviously, since I have moved/merged the article, much needs to be done. I will do what I can but much needs to be fleshed out. Also, anyone know where we can find a photo of the DC-10 which was used to develop winglets? &mdash;Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 17:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Try the NASA winglet article. Just saw it there the other day. ericg ✈ 10:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Merger of Wingtip Device and Wingtip articles
There has been a proposal to merge the Wingtip device article with the Wingtip article. Since wing tips are found on all fixed wing aircraft, but wing tip devices are found on very very few of them, the only way I can see of merging these articles is if the Wingtip Device article is made a sub-section of the wingtip article. Otherwise I think that they should be left as two separate articles. Ahunt 14:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a falsehood. While wingtip devices are not common on older aircraft, several manufacturers now supply devices on the majority, if not all of their product line. This includes Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier, Boeing, Gulfstream, etc. &mdash;Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 11:30, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

A320 blended winglet testing
A few months back, Airbus determined that blended winglets on the jetBlue A320s were a failure. I can't find a press article stating this, though I know I've seen it. Anyone know where to find it? &mdash;Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 15:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Image placement
Please leave the image placement alone for a while. I'm working on major content additions, and will be changing the images to follow the text. We can play with the window dressing when the content is stable. Dhaluza 12:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC) On top it states "MD-11... ...the first mainline airliner to feature the winglets" near the bottom "Boeing 747-400 ...the first mainline airliner to feature the winglets I removed a comment about problems with the A380 because it was irrelevant in a discussion of the A320 and it wasn't mentioned in the article cited (October 22, 2007). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.109.155 (talk) 04:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

History: connection to bird flight?
Reading this article, I was surprised not to see any connection with bird flight, specifically the slotted wing tips found on the soaring species such as the condor and eagle. Surely they provided some inspiration. --IanOsgood 19:36, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:MMA.jpg
Image:MMA.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page. If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 12:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Laminar airflow?
My understanding is that winglets and wing fences also increase efficiency by reducing vortex interference with laminar airflow near the tips of the wing, by 'moving' the confluence of low-pressure (over wing) and high-pressure (under wing) air away from the surface of the wing. My understanding is that wingtip vortices create turbulence originating at the leading edge of the wingtip, and propagating backwards and inboard. This turbulence 'delaminates' the airflow over a small triangular section of the outboard wing, thus decreasing overall lift. The fence/winglet drives the area where the vortext forms upwards away fronm the wing surface. Is my understandign correct, or is the increased efficiency solely because of the pressure effects against the winglet itself? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.192.1 (talk)

Image:Wing planform and winglets.svg
This newly added image has an immensely long and confused caption. This is not the purpose of captions, the text should be included in the text and properly referenced. Please see MOS for more information on this. - Ahunt (talk) 12:47, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree so I've commented it out for the moment - Adrian Pingstone (talk) 16:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Not solely on fixed-wing aircraft
The article asserts that 'winglets' are used on fixed-wing aircraft but fails to mention their use on wind turbines. --TraceyR (talk) 22:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Those wouldn't be, strictly speaking, "winglets" or even "wing tip devices" but rather rotor or prop devices. I think that belongs in a different article along with P-tip propellers and helicopter rotor blade tip devices. - Ahunt (talk) 00:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I suppose that it depends on the definition of "wing". Helicopter rotor blades are also known as rotary wings. Modern wind-turbine rotor-blades also sport such wingtip devices. The fact that they are passive rather than active (the only major difference) shouldn't preclude their mention here. I'll try to find (or take) a photo of one for use here. --TraceyR (talk) 08:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * My preference would be for a new article on prop and rotor tip devices rather than tack it on this article. Aerodynamically, while they have some common elements, they are quite different subjects. - Ahunt (talk) 12:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Wright brothers "blinkers"
This device was at first a single axial blinker, then two lateral ones about mid-span. These small vertical surfaces were located within the canard planes, not at the tip and not closing the area between the planes. They were installed for adding vertical surface at the front of the plane, to get a better roll/yaw coupling, i.e. spiral stability (the plane was lacking central and front lateral area). Definitively not winglets.Plxd (talk) 15:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Images
At the end of the article there are two images intertwined with the references. I do not have the technical expertise to fix the problem. I'm sure one of you out there in Wikipedia land though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.187.122.1 (talk) 04:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It looks fine to me when viewed with Google Chrome 17.0.963.83 and Firefox 11.0, with no images near the refs section at any widths up to 1440 px. Can you describe What are you seeing and also which browser are you using? - Ahunt (talk) 11:28, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Missing citation
There is no reference given for the following:

"There are several types of wingtip devices, and although they function in different manners, the intended effect is always to reduce the aircraft's drag by partial recovery of the tip vortex energy."

Could the author please give one?

Mcamp@cinci.rr.com (talk) 21:27, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Found a reference which was possibly the source. The source article made it clear that winglets reduce induced drag simply by increasing effective aspect ratio (without all of the structural penalties imposed by increasing wingspan). The original extract seemed to suggest, incorrectly, that winglets per se have some ability to "reduce vortex energy", independent of the results of simply increasing aspect ratio in a different way: vertically rather than horizontally.

Edited the text accordingly.

Mcamp@cinci.rr.com (talk) 00:32, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The ref should really be added. What was it? - Ahunt (talk) 00:59, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Possible copyright issue
I just added a citation to. Then I noticed several chunks of this article are word-for-word the same as that source. Burninthruthesky (talk) 20:45, 3 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Which chunks? And have you checked the WP article history to see when they were added, and by whom? - BilCat (talk) 20:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The citation I added was in Wingtip_device para 2. The text was added around January 2007, but I haven't found the exact diff yet. Burninthruthesky (talk) 21:05, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You don't need to find the diff, you can just remove the copyright vios, or re-write them if you like. - Ahunt (talk) 21:25, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Since the journal is dated 2014, I'm unsure which may be the original. Is it possible the Literature Review of that paper sourced Wikipedia? Burninthruthesky (talk) 21:39, 3 April 2015 (UTC)


 * It's quite possible the paper sourced WP, or perhaps both WP and the paper. Copied the same sources. One way to help determine that is through a painstakingly long process of comparing the origin addition to WP in 2007 with the paper, and noting the differences, and then checking a diff from 2014 to see if it more closely resembles the paper than the original addition. Sometimes it's possible to see paragraphs and words added to WP that eventually made up the text in the later copy (the paper in this case). But if it is a near-verbatim copy in 2007, and the WP versions changed later, that might indicate a common source. It's sort of the WP version of the Synoptic Problem! - BilCat (talk) 22:05, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Further inspection of the history of that paragraph shows several revisions to the wording, by various users, before 2007. This leads me to the (slightly shocking) conclusion the reference is WP:CIRCULAR rather than the article WP:COPYVIO. I will remove the citation. Burninthruthesky (talk) 07:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)


 * That is a real danger with Wikipedia, we have become so well-respected that other websites are quoting us, which would be fine if they would attribute it! Good catch! - Ahunt (talk) 12:19, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

First use of Winglets...
...weren´t on the Rutan in 1975, but on the Junkers W 33 D-1167 "Bremen" in 1927. Pic: http://www.flugzeuginfo.net/acimages/w33l_kp.jpg Also Somervilles biplane had sort of "blended winglets" as early as 1911. Have a nice day. 46.114.75.188 (talk) 23:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Use of 'Wingtip devices' in Marine propellers' blades
Hallo!: Same as Hartzell used the blade tip additions in aircraft propellers blades, the concept arrived to some patents in the field of marine propellers, for example: ES-0444150_A1 (1976); ES-8300608_A2 (1981); ES-0293837_U (1987). Numbers are: 'Publication number', and applicant: 'Astilleros espanoles' (Astilleros españoles). All these patents have expired, can be used, and are of open and free download in www.oepm.es (No need to enter a key for download), or in www.espacenet.com. Any OCR -Optical Character Recognition- software, free versions exist, will generate a Word or other format file, that can be translated into many languages by on-line translators, as Google translate. Enjoy the day and have some fun!. Thanks, regards, + Salut--Caula (talk) 17:45, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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A-10 Lippisch ears
Aren't those Lippisch ears in the A-10 wing tips? ——Nikolas Ojala (talk) 11:42, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Help!? about Hoerner wing tips and dutch roll in He 162 planes
I am uninformed about stuff like this, but have actually been vaguely curious about winglets that I've seen on planes at an airport near to me, and I arrived at this article today to try to make sense of statements in obituaries today about death of aerospace pioneer Joe Clark (aeronautics) (new stub article). One obituary mentioned his role "perfecting and selling blended winglets" that reduce drag and improve performance of more than 9,000 private and commercial jets (per Seattle bizjournals obituary, March 31, 2020).

However I was derailed by the article having a long-standing nonsensical/ungrammatical statement, about a winglet being used during World War II production of He 162 planes: "This was done in order to counteract the dutch roll characteristic the marked three degrees of dihedral angle for each wing panel that the original He 162 design's wings possessed." I cannot parse that, I think it does not make sense as a sentence. The sentence became garbled in this 21 December 2016 edit by User:The PIPE, which unfortunately modified the original coverage of the issue for the He 162, added 18 June 2014 by The PIPE.

I added a link to the dihedral (aeronautics) article, moved the paragraph, and broke it into shorter sentences, and otherwise edited it in this diff just now to become the following:"The earliest-known implementation of a Hoerner-style downward-angled 'wingtip device' on a jet aircraft was during World War II. This was the so-called 'Lippisch-Ohren' (Lippisch-ears), allegedly attributed to the Messerschmitt Me 163's designer Alexander Lippisch, and first added to the M3 and M4 third and fourth prototypes of the Heinkel He 162A Spatz jet light fighter for evaluation. This addition was done in order to counteract the dutch roll characteristic present in the original He 162 design, related to its wings having a marked dihedral angle.  This became a standard feature of the approximately 320 completed He 162A jet fighters built, with hundreds more He 162A airframes going unfinished by V-E Day."

Is that okay now?

There was also a "citation needed" tag added September 2016 with "reason=cited source does not support claim that these act as wingtip devices", which I don't understand. I suppose a winglet might be considered a "wingtip device", right? Then the complaint is about how the source does not support the wingtip device being a wingtip device? I know that I am uninformed in this subject area, but I removed the "citation needed" tag. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could review this sourcing issue? The citation needed tag followed this sentence: "As production of the Third Reich's chosen turbojet-powered emergency fighter was of prime importance at the start of 1945, disruption of the production line to make other types of changes to correct such a problem were not likely to have been available, and the added wingtip devices became a standard feature of the approximately 320 completed He 162A jet fighters built, with hundreds more He 162A airframes going unfinished by V-E Day" which was attributed to the J. Richard Conway 1972 source. The sentence partially duplicated info in a previous sentence. And to me, the sentence appeared speculative, anyhow, and I am suspicious that it was speculation by the Wikipedia editor, so I removed the sentence entirely. (I may be wrong, i.e. if the source does talk about changes being "not likely to have been available", then my uninformed removal should probably be reversed.) --Doncram (talk) 18:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:52, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Different winglets and sharklets .jpg

Active wingtips
, I kinda nerded out a bit there, didn't I? This page is so bad! Anything substantive kinda stands out. But this tech is so interesting. Raynatravis (talk) 04:43, 18 March 2021 (UTC)


 * No worries, but it needs to be proportionate and neutral in scope. I'll try to read the sources tomorrow and see what can be kept, if anything. BilCat (talk) 04:48, 18 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I think the article would benefit from an explanation of “active wingtip” but the emphasis on a brand name, and the claims about extraordinary feats of performance, are inappropriate in an encyclopaedia. Dolphin ( t ) 04:56, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

First two paragraphs contain inaccuracies
I quote the inaccurate sections from the first two paragraphs of the wiki-page:

"[Wingtip devices] intended effect is always to reduce an aircraft's drag by partial recovery of the tip vortex energy."

"Partial recovery of the energy" in the very least needs clarification and a source. I'd argue that is inaccurate, see McLean, Doug (2005). Wingtip Devices: What They Do and How They Do It (PDF). 2005 Boeing Performance and Flight Operations Engineering Conference.

"Such devices increase the effective aspect ratio of a wing without greatly increasing the wingspan. Extending the span would lower lift-induced drag, but would increase parasitic drag and would require boosting the strength and weight of the wing."

Wingtip devices also result in parasitic drag, it doesn't matter if the wetted area is vertical or horizontal. Wingtips also add weight and can increase the bending moment on the wing.

"...the winglet also reduces the lift-induced drag caused by wingtip vortices" - Vortices do not impact the lift-induced drag, they are a result of it. See McLean, Doug (2005). Wingtip Devices: What They Do and How They Do It (PDF). 2005 Boeing Performance and Flight Operations Engineering Conference. FropFrop (talk) 06:09, 7 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The user @Dolphin51, replied to another talk topic I started in the related page wingtip vortices, they corrected me on an inaccuracy I made in the text above, which I have copied and pasted below:
 * "I agree that some extra clarity would be desirable. However, your understanding that “induced drag causes the vortices” is immature. This style of thinking about matters of physics is highly inaccurate. When an airfoil is inclined to a flowing fluid so that it has an angle of attack, many things happen - lift occurs, drag increases, the fluid velocity around the airfoil acquires a spanwise component, a vortex sheet develops, trailing vortices develop, downwash occurs, orientation of the lift and drag vectors changes, lift-induced drag occurs, and so on! There are other changes too, that I haven’t mentioned. To select one of these (such as induced drag) and suggest that it causes one of the others (such as trailing vortices) is incorrect. All these things occur simultaneously as a consequence of changing the angle of attack on the airfoil. There is no other cause-and-effect, and there is no time lag between them as is sometimes suggested. This principle is not unique to fluid dynamic lift; it is true of most phenomena of interest in physics."
 * I believe most of what I said is still relevant when it comes to potential improvements in the page.
 * FropFrop (talk) 06:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC)


 * There is no single, correct explanation of induced drag; there are several explanations, all satisfactory. Similarly there is no single, correct explanation of the way wingtip devices reduce induced drag; there are several explanations, all satisfactory. It is inappropriate for the lead to this article to state that these devices operate by partial recovery of tip vortex energy. This might be one satisfactory explanation but it certainly isn’t the only one. Drag is a force but energy is not, so attempting to explain drag in terms of energy is not consistent with WP:Make technical articles understandable. I have erased the offending words. Dolphin ( t ) 11:02, 8 June 2023 (UTC)