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Aircraft Stepups

Active Winglets: Bolt-on Efficiency

In the imaginary world of ideal airplane design, wings would be infinite of length and short of chord, yielding lots of lift and little drag. In the real world of airplane design, that’s not an option, so we resort to aerodynamic tricks to whittle away drag. One of these is winglets, a retrofit idea being aggressively pursued by Tamarack Aerospace. Although winglets may appear as stylish cosmetics implying speed and modernity, Tamarack claims they’re a lot more practical than that. Winglets mimic the characteristics of a high-aspect-ratio, low-drag wing, so on high-performance aircraft, they increase climb rate and improve efficiency by allowing equivalent cruise speeds at lower power settings. But it’s not as simple as that, at least for the retrofit market. Even as they add lift, winglets impose additional structural loads on the wing that can exceed its certification limits.

Paul Bertorelli
Verified

In the imaginary world of ideal airplane design, wings would be infinite of length and short of chord, yielding lots of lift and little drag. In the real world of airplane design, that’s not an option, so we resort to aerodynamic tricks to whittle away drag. One of these is winglets, a retrofit idea being aggressively pursued by Tamarack Aerospace.

Although winglets may appear as stylish cosmetics implying speed and modernity, Tamarack claims they’re a lot more practical than that. Winglets mimic the characteristics of a high-aspect-ratio, low-drag wing, so on high-performance aircraft, they increase climb rate and improve efficiency by allowing equivalent cruise speeds at lower power settings.

Paul Bertorelli

Paul Bertorelli is Aviation Consumer’s Editor at Large. In addition to his valued contributions to Aviation Consumer, his in-depth video productions on sister publication AVweb cover a wide variety of topics that greatly contribute to safety, operation and aircraft ownership. When Paul isn’t writing or filming, he’s out flying his J3 Cub.