A Wing Tip Device to Improve An Aircraft’s Fuel Economy by 6 percent?

A 6% gain in fuel efficiency in the aviation industry is big news! Considering a Boeing 747 burns a gallon of fuel per second, a 6% gain translates into 600,000 gallons of fuel saved per year, per aircraft! Anything that promises something that big warrants much consideration.

Winglets…

At the tip of an aircraft wing (those vertical or tilted structures jutting out from the end of an aircraft wing) are in place to minimize the high-pressure spiral vortices that form at the end of an aircraft wing due to the intricate pressure differences that form in this area.

These vortices…

Create significant drag and considerably reduce fuel efficiency in aircraft.

A crafty solution to this has apparently come from the singular efforts of a French aeronautics teacher called Christian Hugues.

The device designed by him…

Is called the Minix wing tip and it can replace the tilted winglets mentioned above.

It can also be retrofitted to any airplane and it promises to reduce the wing-tip vortex and thereby lower the drag acting on the aircraft wing.

Before:

After:

So what does all this translate into?

A 6% increase in an aircraft’s fuel economy as established through prototype testing.

Real-world wind tunnel testing and flight-testing maybe next for something this promising, and let’s keep our hopes checked until the verdict is out on this one.

Via: Gizmag