Variable camber is a feature of some of

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. ...

wing A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is exp ...

s that changes the camber (or curvature) of the main

aerofoil An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turb ...

during flight. In one system, the leading and/or trailing edge sections of the whole wing pivot to increase the effective camber of the wing. This may be used to increase the maximum

lift coefficient In fluid dynamics, the lift coefficient () is a dimensionless quantity that relates the lift generated by a lifting body to the fluid density around the body, the fluid velocity and an associated reference area. A lifting body is a foil or a ...

in order to shorten the take-off run, or to enhance manoeuvrability in the air. An early example was flown on the

Westland N.16 The Westland N.1B was a prototype British single-engined floatplane fighter aircraft of the First World War. The first aircraft to be designed by Westland Aircraft, it was a single-engined tractor biplane. Despite good performance, only two a ...

of 1917.Lukins, A.H.; ''The book of Westland aircraft'', Aircraft (Technical) Publications Ltd, (1943 or 1944). Although flaps on the trailing or leading edge of a wing do vary the overall camber and are sometimes described as camber–changing flaps, they do not vary the main lifting surface in the same way that a variable-camber wing does. Various other mechanisms have been tried. These include a device that controls the location and shape of the entire upper surface of the airfoil, a retractable bridge that connects two separate high aspect ratio wings, turning them into a single low aspect ratio wing or with telescopic segments that could be forced out, increasing the thickness, chord and shape of the affected portion of the wing. The Parker Variable Wing had a fully flexible aerofoil.

References

Aircraft wing components Variable-geometry-wing aircraft Wing configurations {{component-aircraft-stub

See also

References