In summary:
- Reduced/No Fluttering
- Span ballast to reduce loading on wings
- Bearing locations superior to traditional bearing construction
Ok - I hope this finds everyone some interest but that it also finds some experts in real life who can comment further.
I’ve been watching a video that I’ll link to at the end and it’s about high speed (supersonic) model gliders that use dynamic soaring to build extreme speeds. It’s got a lot of technical solutions to problems that I thought were inherent to gliders or all aircraft and didn’t have engineering solutions that were practical.
I was hoping someone else who finds the video interesting (feel free to skip to parts that are more about the solutions) could also comment on if manned-gliders have implemented these same solutions?
For instance with flutter, all gliders go through flutter testing in flight for certification. But, have they implemented these kind of supersonic engineering principles such as bearing location that the RC high-speed model gliding community has?
I have yet to find as in-depth discussions about manned gliders as I found about this specific subset of gliders. So if someone has pointers to those I’m all ears.
Another example question is I am fascinated by the Perlan 2 project, but can’t seem to find specifications on how the Perlan 2 glider is engineered to function; if there’s any substantial aerodynamic differences for high altitude or not. All I can find is “they put a pressure cabin on a glider”
Okay…?
Anyway, deep topics like that are abound: thanks.
Here’s something that included discussion about wing-loaded ballast on manned gliders. But it’s not very technical. In the above video he discusses how the wing-loaded ballast is centered on the moment (engineering moment) to stabilize the plane as wings enter different air parcel conditions causing different lift/drag scenarios on each wing. (Turbulence essentially).
FAA isn’t specific if this is how the wing-loaded ballast gets used on manned gliders or if it’s just there.