Running head: Winglets on Sailplanes vs.

Conventional Planes

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

Thomas J. LeRette
Ocean Lakes High School, Math and Science Academy

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

What I Know and What I Want to Know

Ever since I was a kid, it has been my dream to fly in the United States Navy. My dad
was (and still is) a military man and I plan to follow in his footsteps. I used to stare up at the sky
as navy jets would soar overhead at my home in Maryland, near Patuxent River Naval Air
Station. Since then, I have had no bigger goal in life than to go into the Navy.
Winglets and gliding are important more than most people imagine. To me, I feel that
looking into this field could broaden my understanding of gliding, which intrigues me. On a
local level, there is a large military aviation presence in Virginia Beach, so looking into this topic
could help me better understand the principles and factors that allow planes to fly. Finally, there
is such thing as competitive gliding, which is administrated by the Fdration Aronautique
Internationale (World Air Sports Federation), and finding ways to improve flight performance
could revolutionize the business.
This past year, I was struggling to find a topic for my symposium project. I was
originally going to pursue an idea in the environmental science field, like I did freshmen year,
but I decided to go study a topic geared more in the mathematics/physics department. While
watching the nightly news one day, there was a story about airplanes and I noticed these small
structures pointing up at the end of the wings. I wondered, why in the world do these planes
have these structures on the end of their wings? To make the planes look better? I knew these
structures were called winglets, but I did not know what purpose they served. Suddenly, I came
up with the idea to study winglets for my symposium project. I was finally content with my
decision.

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

I unearthed a lot of information about winglets, aerodynamics, and the structural designs
of airplane wings during the research I did for my symposium project. A very significant
concept I found was that of induced drag. Induced drag is drag due to the production of lift. By
the way, drag is the force that resists the motion of a solid through a fluid, and lift is the force
that lifts the plane upwards. Lift is created when the air moving over the upper surface of an
airfoil (the wing) travels faster than the air on the bottom of the wing, producing pressure
differentials on either surface of the wing with low pressure air on the top of the wing and high
pressure air on the bottom of the wing. This is called Bernoullis principle. Because the air
pressure is high on the bottom of the airfoil, the wing is going to be pushed up, or lifted.
However, high pressure air naturally wants to diffuse to where there is lower pressure air.
Because of this fact, high pressure air is going to navigate along the bottom surface of the wing
to the wingtip so that it can curl over to where there is lower pressure. The air curling over the
wingtip produces currents of air traveling away from the wing. These currents of air are called
wingtip vortices. Because these vortices are traveling in the opposite direction of the plane, they
create drag. And since the vortices are created by the forces that create lift, they are a form of
induced drag.
Keep in mind that this information is what I knew at the time I presented my symposium
project, not when I wrote this paper. This fact will come up later in the paper. Anyways, the job
of the winglet is to reduce induced drag on the wingtip. It does this by increasing aspect ratio.
Aspect ratio is the relationship between the length and width of the planes wing: a high aspect
ratio wing will be long and narrow, and vice versa. By increasing the aspect ratio of the wing,
we create more areas of stable air pressure along the wing, maintaining the efficiency of the
wing. This also lowers the effect the vortices have on the wing, thus lowering induced drag. By

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

adding winglets, we get the increased aspect ratio as well as the added bonus that winglets put
less stress on the wings internal structure. A conventional wing extension would put more
pressure on the wing by increasing its root bending moment. The root bending moment is
basically the amount of force felt on the root of the wing at the fuselage when the height of the
tip of the wing changes by an, typically, upward force1. Imagine you take a pencil and put it in
the crack between your desk and the person next to yours desk, sticking up vertically. If you take
the tip of the pencil and begin to pull it any direction, the amount of stress being put on the point
of the pencil in between the two desks would be analogous to the root bending moment.
Anyways, by adding these winglets, we reduce induced drag without having to put more stress
on the wings structure. Plus, it saves space at the airport.
By lowering drag, winglets allow planes to travel faster, increasing fuel-efficiency. In a
study done by Airbus that led to the development of the Sharklet winglet, it was found that
winglets could save up 3% on fuel on long trips2. This may not seem like a lot, but it saves airline
money in the long run. Winglets can also reduce noise pollution in communities surrounding
airports. By lowering drag, the plane can take off easier, making the engines have to work less,
producing less noise. Also, winglets, in my opinion, make the plane much more aesthetically
pleasing by giving the plane a much sleeker look to it.
There are some cons that are associated with winglets. One of these is that winglets tend
to lower the flutter speed of an aircraft3. Flutter is when a structure on the plane, typically the
wing, begins to oscillate violently. This phenomenon is very complex so I will not go very much
into detail about it, but flutter can cause structural failure of the wing, and it has before. Several
deadly plane crashes involving flutter on commercial airlines occurred in the 1950s and 1960s,
and it is still a problem today. Also, winglets are not very practical for use in the military

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

because military planes perform maneuvers that put more stress on the structure of the wing than
those of conventional planes or gliders, which could destroy the winglet in mid-flight.
When I entered Mrs. Graves independent study class and we began to talk about isearch
topics, I knew that I was going to continue my study into aerodynamics. I also decided it would
be even easier to look more into winglets, considering the school had just had the symposium
and I had talked about winglets. But, I did not know what to write about. At first, I was
interested in looking into the effect that winglets have on noise pollution, but I decided that
would be better to do for a symposium project next year (or maybe even for my senior project)
since I would have more time to do it. As we were researching in the library one day, I found a
paper by a professor at Penn State University named Dr. Maughmer, and the title of the paper
was Design of Winglets for High-Performance Sailplanes4. I began to get a little curious now
because I figured, why would someone need to write an entire paper about designing winglets for
sailplanes? Then I thought, there is obviously a difference between the designs of winglets for
sailplanes than for conventional planes, but what was it? Thus, my isearch topic was born.
On my proposal for my isearch paper, I wrote that the topic is, How are winglets used
for unpowered flying (gliding)? However, as I will discuss later, this question is kind of
redundant because all winglets are designed to reduced induced drag, no matter what platform
they are deployed on. The main question I would be trying to answer was: how is the use of
winglets on gliders different than on conventional airplanes? Besides this main research
question, I also wanted to find out when winglets began to be deployed on sailplanes, how are
winglets applied in competitive sailplane competitions, and what other platforms are winglets
deployed on besides airplanes?

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

The Search
The first thing I did after my proposal was approved was to read Dr. Maughmers paper.
As I began to read it, I was getting very tripped up on some new terms that I had previously not
encountered before. I already knew what things like angle of attack, induced drag, and wingtip
vortices were, but I was tripped up by terms like Reynolds number, profile drag, and polars.
Through some research I was able to clear up some of the confusion. The Reynolds number is
used to compare inertial forces to viscous forces. Inertial forces are those that are resistant to
motion, while viscous forces are, as the name suggests, heavy and viscous forces5. Profile drag
is an interesting concept to me because when I was doing my symposium project I assumed there
were only two types of drag: parasitic drag and induced drag, but this thinking was wrong
apparently. I decided that I would try to interview Dr. Maughmer to find out the difference
between profile and parasitic drags because when I read his paper I just thought that Dr.
Maughmer was using a synonym or something similar to it. I will discuss the results of the
interview later. Polars, in aerodynamics, are curves that relate the velocity of the glider with its
sink rate, or rate of descent of the glider. The units are typically, respectively, km/h and m/s6.
Another term worth mentioning is interpolation, which is the generation of points on a graph
using known values on the graph7. This technique is related to finding the line of best fit, but is
not the same. Finding the line of best will give you approximations of missing values between
two known values, while interpolation can yield accurate missing between two known values and
even comes with a formula7:

This formula, however, is

the linear interpolation

formula. There are all sorts of interpolation graphs, including parabolic and cubic. The point is,

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

interpolation was used to analyze data obtained from the winglet experimentations Dr.
Maughmer described in his paper.
After I read Dr. Maughmers paper, I was almost in a kind of shock because in his
introduction, where he discusses induced drag and the role of winglets, Dr. Maughmer talks a lot
about span wise flow, which I did not mention at all in my symposium presentation. Among
other things, I basically figured out that an important part of my symposium project contained
flawed information. I had the definitions and all of the technical stuff wired, but my take on the
theoretical concepts that are crucial to understanding winglets was wrong. In the end, I decided
to contact Dr. Maughmer to see if I could clear up the confusion, even though I had a different
expert written down on my proposal to contact, Mr. Kody (also at Penn State).
The Results
When I reached out to Dr. Maughmer, I was relieved when he seemed open to answering
my questions because I had said I would contact him the weekend before but I never got to it.
Anyways, I still obtained several answers from this interview that are really the impetus of this
research. The first question I had was: what is the difference between parasitic drag and profile
drag, if there is one at all? Parasitic drag is drag associated with the parts of the plane not
producing lift (or a substantial amount of it), including the fuselage. Profile drag is associated
with the airfoil profile (the shape of the wing) and is a part of induced drag. The next question I
had was whether winglets reduce the size of the wingtip vortices or if they simply lessen the
effect the vortices have on the wing. The answer I got was kind of a shock. My thinking prior to
this interview was that induced drag was created by the wingtip vortices. However, vortices are
a result of the induced drag (or the principles that create it). The job of the winglets isnt
primarily to weaken the wingtip vortices but to diffuse the span wise flow of air along the wing,

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

which is contrary to what I was thinking earlier. The other fact Dr. Maughmer pointed out to me
that I had not thought of before was that if the span of the wing was infinite then there wouldnt
be a problem with induced drag. However, it is impossible to build a never ending wing, so the
air has to go somewhere: it curls over the wingtip and creates downwash.
The big question that I got answered was that there was not really a major difference
between winglets that are deployed on sailplanes to those deployed on conventional airplanes.
The winglets on both planes work by the same principles, however they have different missions.
First off, induced drag and velocity exist in an inverse relationship, i.e. as the speed of a plane
increases induced drag will decrease and vice versa. Conventional airplanes only travel at
relatively high speeds, upwards of two hundred knots. However, gliders must operate at a range
of speeds and because of this the winglet must be able to work with the induced drag at various
levels of speeds. Its kind of ironic because the glider seems simpler than a jet aircraft but, as Dr.
Maughmer pointed out, it is almost more difficult to design a winglet for a glider than for a
conventional aircraft because of the range of speeds that a glider must operate at.
Even after obtaining all of this information from the interview, I was still very confused
because I failed to write down all of the facts Dr. Maughmer gave me. I suppose I should
improve my interviewing skills. However, I did answer the second of my research questions,
which is the most important, of whether or not there was a difference between winglets deployed
on sailplanes versus those on conventional airplanes.
After this interview, I emailed Mr. Kody at Penn State, but, unfortunately, I received no
reply. I was a bit disappointed because Mr. Kody created a computer program to design winglets
for aging gliders, which must have meant that he knew something about the difference between

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

winglets on gliders and on conventional airplanes. I was just hoping I would be able to clear up
the confusion I still had.
The next couple of research questions were relatively easy to answer. My first research
question, when did winglets appear on competitive gliders, was actually answered in Dr.
Maughmers paper. According to that article, the effort to design winglets for these sailplanes
began in the early 1980s and culminated with a company in Germany adopting the research
teams winglet design for a variant of their sailplane4. The benefits that winglets promise have
compelled many sailplane manufacturers to install winglets on most of their gliders before they
even leave the assembly line.
The third research question I had was how are winglets being deployed in competitive
gliding competitions/races? To answer this question, I accessed the websites of some renowned
sailplane manufacturers. Then, I looked at some of their sailplanes available and determined
which ones had winglets on them by using pictures provided by the company. The
manufacturers I looked into were Alexander- Schleicher, Schempp- Hirth, and DG
Flugzeugbau8,9,10. Interestingly, I just happened to discover that Alexander- Schleicher is the
oldest manufacturer of sailplanes in the world8. For each of these companies, I found that almost
all variants of sailplanes available came with winglets added onto them8,9,10. This indeed shows
that winglets are being widely deployed in competitive soaring (gliding) competitions. As a side
note, the Germans are well known for their gliders because after World War I they were not
allowed to have an air force, so the German Air Force turned to the relatively unexplored field of
gliding to train their pilots.
The final question I had to answer was, what other platforms are winglets deployed on
besides aircraft? Unsurprisingly, winglets seem to be an airplane exclusive technology. I could

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

not find any examples where winglets were used outside of flight. However, there are some
parallels to winglets outside of aviation, such as stepped hulls on boats. A stepped hull is one
that has little notches in its hull at the waterline11. This design is a parallel to winglet technology:
both are designed to optimize the performance of their respective platforms. Stepped hulls even
produce lift for the boat, which I found interesting because most people associate the concept of
lift with airplanes but it is actually applicable to other topics11. There are also some very unique
designs to winglets, such as spiroid designs, split-scimitar designs, and even winglets that bend
only down. There are also some that curl at the tip to create an s shape12,13. Most of these
designs, however, are still in the developmental phase and are not being widely deployed. The
exception would be the split-scimitar winglet, which is extensively used on Boeing 737 aircraft.
It features the standard winglet design, except it also has a structure protruding downwards12.
Overall, the better question to ask would have been what types of winglets are there, instead of
what types of platforms they are deployed on. Despite this, I still obtained some information
about what the future of winglet technology looks like.
Whats Next
It has indeed been quite the journey for me since the start of my research to the moment I
write this paper. I still feel like I have a lot of work to do, however. I know for sure that I am
going to be looking into spanwise flow and downwash because I am still very confused about
how these concepts work. I also believe that I am going to be looking into the various benefits
associated with the different designs of winglets available.
When I was researching interpolation and flight polars, I found a graph on google that
looked oddly similar to the kind of graphs we were sketching in our precalculus class. One of
the things I took away from this is that students claim that they will not have to use any of the

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

stuff they learn in real life. Well, after seeing this graph, I have a whole new understanding
about why our teachers are teaching us material we dont think we need, and I hope that other
students will have the same realization as me. Also, I would like to research more about how to
interpolate data because it looks like it could be very useful for data analysis on a senior project.
Another interesting idea I conjured up was that if it was possible to use computer
software to design winglets for gliders, could this technology be used to design winglets for
commercial jet aircraft? If this technology is being utilized for this purpose (which I assume it
is) could it also be practical for military use? Though it seems unlikely, it is always possible this
could work.
I was also kind of concerned about interviewing Mr. Kody because he had written about
using advanced computer algorithms for his design process, which I have no knowledge about at
all. If I had interviewed Mr. Kody, I might now have had a clue about what he was talking about.
I suppose I should have done some more research into the field if I had not known I was going to
be contacting Dr. Maughmer. Anyhow, I believe it would be very beneficial to research more
about computer programming and algorithms not only for the reasons discussed but because our
world is becoming inundated with computer technology.
Overall, this isearch paper has been rewarding journey for me. I was very nervous after
Dr. Maughmers interview because afterwards I did not know if I should try and talk about stuff I
was very confused about in my paper or if I should just tell it as it happened and not tread into
unfamiliar territory. I chose the latter, and now I am very comfortable writing this paper. I was a
bit unprepared to write this paper for two reasons. One, I did not use the blog posts to my
advantage by using the about-point-react format. If I had, I feel this paper would have been a lot
easier to write. Secondly, I felt I knew everything there was to know about winglets since I had

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

done my symposium project on them. This caused me to put less effort into researching relevant
topics until I had a bit of a wakeup call after my interview. But, in the end, I feel I have grown
tremendously since I started my research and I am eager to delve even further into this topic.

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

References
1

Bending Moments [Internet]. Tripod: c2002 [cited 2015 Jun 14]. Available from:

http://ciurpita.tripod.com/rc/rcsd/bendMom/bendMom.html
2

The Flying Engineer ~ Technically and Operationally Commercial Aviation [Internet].

WordPress.com: 2013 [cited 2015 Jun 14]. Available from:

http://theflyingengineer.com/flightdeck/winglets-and-sharklets/
3

Boyle, G. Effects of winglet on transonic flutter characteristics of a cantilevered twin-engine

transport wing model. [Internet]. 1986 [cited 2015 Jun 14]. Available from:
https://www.academia.edu/2181246/Effects_of_winglet_on_transonic_flutter_characteristics_of_
a_cantilevered_twin-engine-transport_wing_model
4

Maughmer, M. Design of winglets for high-performance sailplanes. Journal of Aircraft

[Internet]. 2003 [cited 2015 May 12]; 40(6). Available from:

http://www.mandhsoaring.com/Why%20Winglets/WL-IT.pdf
5

Reynolds Number [Internet]. National Aeronautics and Space Administration: [cited 2015 Jun

14]. Available from: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/reynolds.html

6

Performance Airspeeds for the Soaring Challenged [Internet]. [cited 2015 Jun 15]. Available

from: http://www.5c1.net/Glider%20Performance%20Airspeeds.htm
7

Linear Interpolation [Internet]. Tallahassee(FL): University of Florida; [cited 2015 Jun 14].

Available from: http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~dommelen/courses/eml3100/aids/intpol/

8

Alexander-Schleicher Segelflugzeugbau [Internet]. (Germany): [cited 2015 Jun 10]. Available

from: http://www.alexander-schleicher.de/en/werk/wir-stellen-uns-vor/

Winglets on Sailplanes vs. Conventional Planes

9

Schempp-Hirth Flugzeugbau GmbH [Internet]. Schempp-Hirth Flugzeugbau GmbH Germany):

2006 [cited 2015 Jun 10]. Available from: http://www.schempp-hirth.com/index.php?id=ventus2cxm&L=1

10

DG Flugzeugbau [Internet]. (Germany): [cited 2015 Jun 10]. Available from: http://www.dg-

flugzeugbau.de/index.php?id=1350
11

Soundings: Real boats, real boaters [Internet]. Cruz Bay Publishing Inc. (CA): 2011 Nov 29

[cited 2015 Apr 28]. Available from: http://www.soundingsonline.com/boat-shop/onpowerboats/287360-the-stepped-hull-has-come-of-age

12

Aviation Week [Internet]. Penton (NY): 2012 Mar 11 [cited 2015 Jun 10]. Available from:

http://aviationweek.com/blog/winglets-all-shapes-sizes-and-uses
13

Aviation Partners, Inc. Leaders in Advanced Winglet Technology [Internet]. Aviation Partners

(WA): [cited 2015 Jun 10]. Available from: http://www.aviationpartners.com/future.html