According to this site http://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/1903/construction_photos.htm (about halfway down), the fabric of the wings was structurally significant. Quote: Over 8,000 stitches were hand sewn by the volunteers. Howard DuFour Project Director, remarked, "It's amazing how much those boys depended on the cloth to hold the plane together."
I find it difficult to believe that the aircraft was flyable if a 40N force (4 bags of sugar) would warp the wing nearly 4 meters. Richard > -----Original Message----- > From: Marcel Wittebrood [mailto:MarcelW@;adse.nl] > Sent: 18 October 2002 9:38 am > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Flightgear-devel] Re: Wright flyer wing warping (Jim Wilson) > > > Dear Jim, > > We made a FEM model of the outboard wing to investigate the > shape when warping (see attached pict). I applied 40 N to the > model and it warps 3798 mm at the tip. This will not be > possible in reality because I did not model the fabric. > Because the wing is very thin this influence will be very > small however. The model shows that the stiffness against > warping is very small. The pilot will thus only feel the > aerodynamic stiffness and some extra force due to friction. > You can see that the deflection is almost linear to the tip > and thus the warping angle will also be almost linear. > > _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
