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An elliptical wing is a wing planform whose leading and trailing edges each approximate two segments of an ellipse. It is not to be confused with annular wings, which may be elliptically shaped. Relatively few aircraft have adopted the elliptical wing, an even-smaller number of which attained mass production; the
The Lanchester-Prandtl lifting-line theory [1] is a mathematical model in aerodynamics that predicts lift distribution over a three-dimensional wing from the wing's geometry. [2] The theory was expressed independently [3] by Frederick W. Lanchester in 1907, [4] and by Ludwig Prandtl in 1918–1919 [5] after working with Albert Betz and Max Munk ...
The Spitfire wing may be classified as: "a conventional low-wing cantilever monoplane with unswept elliptical wings of moderate aspect ratio and slight dihedral".. The wing configuration or planform of a fixed-wing aircraft (including both gliders and powered aeroplanes) is its arrangement of lifting and related surfaces.
English: Non-uniform lift distribution Realistic lift distribution. A uniform lift distribution over the wing of an aircraft would cause the shedding of two wingtip trailing vortices and a (stationary) starting vortex. Note that in reality, lift distribution cannot be uniform, and that viscosity causes decay of the trailed and starting vortices.
Typically, the elliptical spanwise distribution of lift produces the minimum induced drag [15] for a planar wing of a given span. A small number of aircraft have a planform approaching the elliptical — the most famous examples being the World War II Spitfire [13] and Thunderbolt. For modern wings with winglets, the ideal lift distribution is ...
Mean aerodynamic chord (MAC) is defined as: [6] = (), where y is the coordinate along the wing span and c is the chord at the coordinate y.Other terms are as for SMC. The MAC is a two-dimensional representation of the whole wing. The pressure distribution over the entire wing can be reduced to a single lift force
The ideal lift distribution across a wing is elliptical, and extending partial-span flaps causes a significant departure from the elliptical. This increases lift-induced drag which can be beneficial during approach and landing because it allows the aircraft to descend at a steeper angle.
A realistic lift distribution causes the shedding of a complex vorticity pattern behind the aircraft. The horseshoe vortex model is a simplified representation of the vortex system present in the flow of air around a wing .