Spiroids Winglets - the way forward?
Aviation Partners Inc. (API) will begin testing “spiroid” loop-shaped wing tip devices on a Dassault Falcon 50 starting in early June 2010, Hank Thompson, the company’s vice president of operations, told Aviation Week today.
The development program is funded in part by a federal government grant administered by FAA’s John A. Volpe Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass. The goal will be to explore wing modifications that have the potential to reduce FAR Part 36 noise signature and carbon emissions. The spiroid devices being developed for the Falcon 50 are a generation newer than the original designs tested by API on a Gulfstream G-II several years ago.
Thompson admits being “a bit reluctant” to make predictions for the actual performance improvement that could be obtained with the spiroids, but he said, “We’re optimistic that they may be one of the best wing tip devices API has yet designed.” The spiroids aren’t being specifically designed for Dassault Falcon business jets. API mainly is using the Falcon 50 as a flying test bed because it’s a company-owned airplane.
API Senior VP Technology Louis “Bernie” Gratzer, PhD has spent decades refining the firm’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes, feeding back in data obtained from flight tests to hone the accuracy of his predictions. API claims that its current-generation winglets have saved the airlines more than 2-billion gallons of fuel since making their debut on Southwest Airlines’ Boeing 737 aircraft in mid 2003.
“We’ve never created a design that didn’t do exactly what we said it would do,” Thompson said confidently.
