Passengers cannot tell if the airflow over a wing is laminar or turbulent.ĭominic: Hello, Ethan! I would like to know, how do you plan to achieve laminar flow? And when will this method be applied to airliners?Įthan: Great questions. When we talk about turbulent air in the context of laminar flow, we're only talking about the air that is directly touching the wing. The turbulence that passengers encounter during flight is due to the airplane flying through unsteady air. HeatherD: Reading over laminar flow, does this mean that it would help with removing the feelings of turbulence? There was an article online lately how turbulence really shouldn't scare people.Įthan: Not exactly. Quasar920: What's the maximum speed range a laminar flow airplane can fly?Įthan: Laminar flow is something that can occur at all speed ranges, though the challenges in obtaining laminary flow vary with speed. › Video: NASA Laminar Flow Tests, Supersonic (2009) › Feature: NASA Laminar Flow Tests, Supersonic (2009) He has degrees from Purdue University and UCLA, and is a native of Indiana. Prior to his work on SCRAT and DRELFGE, Ethan worked on the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) project he was a team member on the X-43 hypersonic project, the Phoenix Missile Hypersonic Testbed, and an assistant to the chief engineer for the Space Shuttle Program.
LAMINAR FLOW AIRFOIL FULL
He started at Dryden as a co-op and has been there full time since 1999. Why is achieving laminar flow so hard to do, exactly?Įthan is an aeronautical engineer in the Flight Controls & Dynamics Branch at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. What can laminar flow mean to the flying public? How do you turn a regular aircraft into a flying laboratory? EDT, Ethan answered your questions about the quest for laminar flow and what it means for all of us if he succeeds. DREs, which are tiny bumps that actually stabilize airflow, have shown great potential to reduce aircraft drag on future aircraft. In about two years they'll fly the DRELFGE onboard - a large "wing glove" with the funky-sounding "Discrete Roughness Elements," along the leading edge. Under SCRAT, Ethan is working with other researchers to transform a Gulfstream GIII aircraft into a flying laboratory. He's the chief engineer for NASA's SubsoniC Research Aircraft Testbed, or SCRAT, and for the DRE Laminar Flow Glove Experiment, or DRELFGE. All those objects break the flow and create tiny pockets of turbulence.Įthan Baumann of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center is a key character in today's laminar flow story. The really challenging part of this quest is that laminar flow is very hard to do, thanks to seams and rivets and hinges and flaps and anything that sticks out or moves. If you can achieve it, wonderful things happen.
Laminar flow means the smooth, uninterrupted flow of air over an aircraft's wing. For years, people who fly or design or build airplanes have been on a quest for aviation's holy grail – laminar flow.
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