Aviation Partners: New generation of winglets enroute

Aviation Partners Inc. (API) president Joe Clark says a new generation of winglets will make their way onto commercial airliners in the next five  years as operators look to cut costs and emissions by increasing fuel economy.

Speaking to As-The-Croft-Flies at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) annual trade show in Orlando this week, Clark said his engineers are experimenting with a variety of new designs, including spiroids, forward-swept winglets and split winglets, devices that extend above and below the wing, all of which will be flight tested.

The initial spiroid design, which API first tested on a Gulfstream II in 2001, was said to reduce drag by as much 10% in cruise, up several points from what the API's trademark blended winglets can provide. Clark did not provide details as to what the other designs might yield.

API is now prepping to fly newly designed spiroids on a company Falcon 50 by year's end as part of a $2.06 million earmark being administered by the US Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA).

RITA is also paying API $600,000 for fuel efficiency data captured during the 2001 tests as part of an effort to "demonstrate the modeled fuel burn and emissions implications of the spiroid winglet technolgy on commercial aviation in the US", according to contract award document.

API has already done some analysis of spiroids on large aircraft like the Boeing 747-400, as is shown in this promotional picture from aeronautical engineering firm, Analytical Methods Inc. (AMI).

Clark says data from the 2001 flights include performance information for a baseline aircraft (without spiroids) followed by the same data for the aircraft equipped with spiroids.

The new spiorids, designed with the latest computational fluid dynamics programs, are currently being manufactured, says Clark, adding that the next series of tests will include taking data in more of the flight envelope, including stalls.

A video of a 2001 test flight is shown below.

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