BUG WIPING DURING FLIGHT - How does it work?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ย. 2024
- Laminar Aerotec: laminar-aerote...
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#LS3 #GliderTuning
Nice gadget and well explained, Stefan. 👍
Left-Bug-Wiper said to Right-Bug-Wiper; “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
Right-Bug-Wiper replied; “True, but you can’t beat the View!” 😁
Nice one, Johan! May we quote your joke and give you a credit for it?
@@laminaraerotec6606 I’m glad you like it.
You’re welcome to use the joke.
Fantastic one, Johan!
@@Johan-ex5yj great, thanks!
Is there a pun I'm missing? I dont get it
I have no idea why I'm watching this at 4:35 a.m. LOL I don't have a glider or anything but I enjoy watching your videos!
✌️😊👍
That´s so cool. Thanks for watching!
I know that a laminar flow airfoil can be quite critical of small disruptions of airflow caused by the small bump of a bug. Forty years ago we were doing glide tests by using small pieces of tape to represent a smashed bug. Our question then was how do we clean it in flight. Nice to see a system that works.
How much of a reduction did the "bugs" make to the Glide Ratio?
Many commentators are critical of the benefits from bug wipers. I'd like to argue why the device is beneficial.
Firstly, the reason for removing bugs is not because of their weight but because of the aerodynamic impact they have.
Glider aircraft are highly optimized vehicles. Often high-performance gliders have laminar flow wings. These wings are optimized for performance however more susceptible to flow separation even due to small amounts of surface contamination.
Finding numbers on this was really hard. Unfortunately Laminar Aerotec (the manufacturers of the device) aren't very transparent with the numbers. I asked a glider pilot from my local club on the benefit and he claimed up to 10% if the wing is very sensitive and the bugs are numerous but couldn't give me a source.
Upon longer research I found one source with the following data: The disturbance of the laminar airflow i.e. turbulent airflow caused by a single bug expands in a conical shape in an angle of 10 - 30 degrees behind said bug [1]. Therefore especially the leading edge is vulnerable to impurities. This leads to a performance reduction of 10% - 30% with a "bug density" of 20 bugs per meter [2]. Depending on the weather, season and location, this bug density can be 5 - 10 times as much [1]. The surface-contamination-susceptibility due to bugs of laminar flow wings has even concerned NASA who developed complex fluid discharge systems on wings to combat insect contamination [2].
Even the glider manufacturers have been building special "garages" for storing the bugwiper snugly outside of the airflow (little cavities in the fuselage) [3].
I see many other commentators regard this device as a mere gimmick. That was my first impression as well but I'd encourage you to take a closer look at the history, development and (aerodynamic) reasons for it being so widespread in high-performance gliding since the 1980s. I'd also encourage Laminar Aerotec to publish some data on the performance delta of their device with different aircraft and bug densities.
[1] see the website bugwiper . virtualave . net/ using the WayBack machine (second menu item "entwicklung") The original research was published in the soaring magazine by Dick Johnsson.
[2] NASA Document ID 19850067951
[3] search "bugwiper asw24" on youtube
I'd post direct links but yt hides my comments if I do.
Nice findings - thanks for taking the time to post this!
Good stuff! Also see : NASA's Bug Team >>
th-cam.com/video/_Mx9rD-lmvM/w-d-xo.html
i wish every youtube comment posted its sources like this
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I like to learn something new every day. Today, this was it.
That's very cool! Most gliders in NZ don't have them, so great to see them up close. Will you convert your manual wind up wipers to electric sometime?
I definitely prefer the electric ones because they don´t distract me from flying the glider. However there is a huge difference in the price, so I will keep the manual ones for a while.
Wow! New Zealand? I thought your "Leader" would ban anything remotely fun.
@@anjetabreymann7179 I know right? I thought NZ's fascist prime minister wouldn't even let him in the country.
@@SteFly pretty easy to do some diy and stick it on yourself
This is my second post on this subject and I want to ask. How much parasitic drag is being cleaned off and how much parasitic drag is increased by having such a device on your wing does it not equal out or does it save?
Thanks again this is a good channel great content
Im sure if you're a glider pilot you'll want the most coefficient lift available while conserving momentum energy and anything on the edges stuck like that could cause microscopic eddies forming to the point if more and more bugs splatter on just the edge it could induce stalling at slower speeds ya kno?
I just asked the same question as this post essentially. HA ha... read it after the fact.
@@ryanlemons3255
There is no lift at the leading edge. It's pure drag there.
@@akulkis True but the leading edge is responsible for how smooth and effective the flow over the wing is.
As an engineer and airline pilot looking to take up soaring in retirement this was very interesting seeing this for the first time. My guess is that weeping lemon Pledge and turning on the bleeds for the leading edges during the launch isn't a good option ;)
You´ve talked about distraction (2:09). I once heard that the cause of fatal collision that killed former world champion Helmut Reichmann was probably due his attention deviation because he was trying a bugwiper and failed to see the other glider. Anyway it was very sad.
Yes indeed, keeping the leading edge clean and bug free is very important, and why I clean mine on my bush plane once a year, whether it needs it or not. Ha ha, if you saw the drag producing things on my plane, you'd hurl, nonetheless, I still have had 3 hours plus dead stick ridge soaring flights with it!
Awesome Stefan. Thanks for sharing this. It took some serious time and brain power to understand how those things were going out and back on the wing with nothing touching them. It always confused the heck out of me lol
It´s really a fantastic invention!
@@SteFly yes fancy stuff! Just yesterday I did only a 37 minute flight with my son onboard to get him used to the DG505MB operation and in 37 minutes of hanging out on the last of the day lift: we had probably 5-10% coverage already. Some really big ones too! They must've flown in from Texas. 😜 That's what we call a BUG strike. 😂
Never knew there was such a thing! Amazing!
You are living a dream Stefan, enjoy every moment
Amazing! I did not know that wings had problems with bugs, and just now that I learned it, there is already a solution to that problem. 😄
I'm German but live in USA, love hearing the accent!!! 😉
Just watching the movement is already very soothing. Great video cheers
I have a request for you, my friend, to take a trip over Switzerland or Italy or any natural place
Oh my gosh how I wish I had such a plane. This type of aircraft is not allowed by my country, but I find pleasure in your videos, God willing. We will continue to support you. God bless you and bless your planes...May God guide you and guide you, keep loving you Stephen Greetings from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan 🇯🇴🇯🇴
❤
You can't have gliders in Jordan? Why not?
Thanks for the explanation. I had never heard that story before. I could not understand the reasoning other than the government just being dickish.
I'm from the States and have a private pilot's license. I have flown gliders as a student. I now fly small planes up and down the beaches on the west coast of Florida.
@@blaster-zy7xx Very cool. I wish you success and success in your life. I hope you always feel happy while you are driving the plane. God willing, I will go to the United States of America in the month of 9 next year to study
I am trying to get my private pilot license and experience flying over America. I will not miss this opportunity. Greetings to you💚
Cool gadget , it will add weight including the motor etc. Maybe a good wax will take care of any bugs sticking to the leading edge. That's my 2 cents.
a little bit of weight won't really have an inpact at all, you also should know that gliders usually fly with balast water.
It is a glider, so weight doesn't matter much, but the reduced drag by removal of the bugs matters a lot.
Thank you for the video and the explanation. That is a very clever device, and an elegant design.
I always go through a car wash just before long milage trips. I calculate I am roughly adding .054 mpg to my overall gas milage, or adding .864 miles in range to my tank. Speed and acceleration has increased by same factor, but de-acceleration and braking distance have likely increased by same factor. Wife won't climb out on hood to clean the front of truck hole I drive down interstate so I am stuck with an unknown factor of deminishing return.
Someone got rich(er) off this idea. But now I'm wondering why a similar system doesn't exist for removing ice. Could you send a hardened version down a wing to break off any ice from the leading edge, and could it be extended to crack ice off from the upper and lower wing surfaces?
That is awesome. A system like this might work for deicing as well.
The way you shoot is amazing
It doesn't add much drag. How much drag does a mosquito add?
This thing must at least add the drag of 1000 bugs on the attack edge of the wing lol
@@oczhaal Exactly what I was thinking :)
An ingenious invention. I had no idea! Next you'll need something to spray alcohol on the wiper to get the extra bits of guts that the threat misses!
Does the bug wiper cause more drag than the amount of drag caused by a single flight of bug collections on the wings? I feel that it does, looks like it's more harm than beneficial.
People just need to wipe their wings down.
Simply put GENIUS!
Very important for laminar flow
Es ist schwer zu glauben dass der von diesem Gerät erzeugter Luftwiderstand kleiner/lohnender ist als der Widerstand von Insekten an der Flügelkante. Ist das eine empirische Erfahrung, oder ist es errechnet worden?
Seems like 100 feet of fishing line would create more drag than the bug splats. A nice wipe down with wax or teflon would reduce the bug good stickage during a flight.
The problem is to get out and wipe them off during the flight. And the string is stoved on reels between uses.
@@sablatnic8030 So during flight no string is exposed to the airflow other than when it's wiping?
@@avi8r66 That is correct, the string is used to pull the gizmo back to the fuselage.
How do you clean the bugs off of your bug wiper?
As an aeronautical engineer, this is the firdt time i hear about the bug wiper. Intresting.
That's cool; I had no idea.. Would a ceramic coating like used on cars not help so the bugs couldn't stick. Just a random thought, but I'm sure the engineers have an answer lol thanks for sharing :)
Ok no idea how I came across a video about bug wipers... But I have a question..
Wouldn't the drag of this contraption out weight the benefits of removing some dead bugs off the wing? I mean the wiper literally uses wind speed to move? Surly bugs won't effect the airfoil that much?
not even a pilot; aspired to be a pilot, but, I chose engineering instead... nonetheless never knew that the accumulation of impacted bugs on the leading edge of an airfoil degraded the laminar flow ... intrigued by this system and watched the video until the end ...
C'est pas pire la traînée de se bout de plastique et tout le matériel que sa implique comparé à 3-4 moustiques ?
Sehr genial. Sowas hab ich noch nie gesehen 🤩
Great looking design!!
Good luck with it!
It's amazing how much better it flies after being wiped...
@@beanshark992 Before it goes down, but then after being wiped I goes up. It's obvious....
Can you feel or measure the improvement of L/D after a round trip of the pair of bug wipers?
There were measurements done by Pirker&Storka, which show a decrease of L/D up to 15%.
Last year at one flight I flew the ASG29 without bug wipers and there were so many bugs on the wing, that I landed early in the afternoon. The glide performance can decreasy drastically, especially at higher speeds. Of course there are also other days with only a few bugs in the air.
@@laminaraerotec6606 would you mind posting a source? Id be curious to read more on this.
It's my frist time to know about this system. Thank you!
Amazing design, who ever made this well done.. wow
Hi Stefan, Never thought it was really useful system. Thanks for your explanations because I didn't understand how it works before.🤔🤔👍👍👍
Thank you! It is very useful at some days here in Germany.
cool gadget Stefan. But you still haven't explained how this bug wiper moves from the start of wing to the wing tip ie how it traverses along the wing leading edge. You only show a (noisy) ratchet or electric motor. Does it work on a pulley system like, you know raising and lowering the flag. So is there a pulley near the wing tip and some nylon chord along the wing leading edge to traverse this gadget along?
That part you haven't explained I believe. Thank you.
It gets pushed out by the air flowing over it.
Very cool idea , lateral thinking. Ur glider, do u manufacturer them ? And do u have a hidden electric motor 2 get them sky ward.
Didn't know that was a thing...knowledge is king 🙂
The boundary layer closest to the airfoil skin is stationary. A small bug won't do jack sh*t to the airflow. The same as when a 737 lands with a wing covered in fine dust. The air is stationary that close.
Depending on the glider, your glide ratio can decrease by 10km by joust 10% bug covering.
Great idea , but seriously is it really it worth it ??? I fly rc gliders will i fit this to get better lift, and was a hang glider pilot in the 90,s a few bugs is not going to slow ya down
I had no idea bugs could fly that high
Could this be applied to wind mills.
But wouldn't the bug wipers create enough drag that negates any gain diminished by gains of removing bugs?
I never would have thought that was a problem
The drag from the bug wiper ? Hahaha.
How many mosquitoes are present as you’re cruising altitude‘s?
Quite a lot of bugs are carried aloft by the same thermals the gliders use - my experience is that there are too many bugs. And gliders don't have a cruising altitude, they thermal to altitude, glide down for the next thermal, up again, down etc.
As you use the device during flight I am assuming the bugs sit on the wings while the plane is flying. That's a very scary tought
Nice 💗thanks for sharing this!
Can a 300lb man fly a glider or is there a weight limit? I really do not know.
Looks like fun if I can fit.
Great video .Does ceramic coating help?
What are the numbers ?
How beneficial is this device ultimately?
Why not simply spray the wings with a hydroscopic solution such as rain-x and prevent bugs from sticking to the wings?
How does the electric one get back to the fuselage? A wire attached zo the fuselage and retrieval engine?
Also, what prevents it falling off from the wing?
Both manual and electric wipers retract them to the fuselage with a thin nylon thread, like a fishing line. They are held to the wing´s leading edge by nothing but the air flow. On the ground they would just fall off the wing.
@@kaihorstmann2783 ok, if they can just fall off the wing on the ground do they?? What holds them on when sitting on the ground??
@@eglide73 in parked position the wipers are completely wound in, and they are tightly pulled against the fuselage by the nylon line. Thus the wiper lines up with the exit hole of the line in the fuselage and stays there
@@kaihorstmann2783 Thanks for the perfect explanation!
That device is way larger than any bug catchment and the device itself looks large enough to really interrupt the laminar flow!
No sense of adventure, Mate ?
What a great system!
Na endlich erklärt mir das mal einer mit simplen Worten. Danke Stefan! Der Leistungsunterschied Mückenbefall - kein Mückenbefall muss markant sein, um diese Apparatur zu rechtfertigen. Woran erkennst Du, ob Du eine verschmutzte Eintrittskannte hast?
Rausschauen, das sieht man :-). Und wo bekommt man >2 Gleitzahlpunkte für 2000€??
@@ackerflieger6703 Korrekt, danke für die Antwort!
How many ?
I heard the Germans have string driven bud-whipes as well! Is that true?
Hab mich immer gefragt wie die Dinger funktionieren. Danke.
eine Frage noch was passiert wenn man sie nicht rechtzeitig wieder zurückholt?
Die Rückholseile werden so abgelängt, dass die Putzer nicht zu weit ausfahren können.
presumably, your invention will also help to clear water drops and ice?
Very nice invention
i need this for my car grille when driving down the highway
This is so bizzare it almost looks like an April fools prank 😀
Great Video! Still waiting for SteFly Merch to come up! ;-)
How come it's not use for cleaning ice formation on regular airplanes ?...with a slight modification of course...
@@randomguyinanglider he was talking about icing and that does matter even if you got an engine
To get a more complete picture, I searched for glider bug wiper retrieval winch.
I would think that contraption would disrupt the airflow a lot more than a few bugs would.
Bug impurities on the leading edge of a laminar flow airfoil can reduce performance by up to 30%. Meanwhile this device is stored snugly at the fuselage for most of the flight. Some aircraft even have dedicated cavities for the device to vanish completely.
I am a bug wiper for my airlines fleet of CRJ 200's. I wipe the leading edge of the wings during there over night stay at our field.
I hate this job on the ground but it needs to be done 🙈
Awesome 🤩!
This guy is so German, and i like it.
I'm a german as well!
Wow! I didn’t know this was a thing
I wonder if this could be useful for deicing ?
Good innovation 👍
How high up do insects fly?
It would be interesting to see a typical wing with bugs to better understand the problem
Very interesting video....I love science class....
What is the car? Very nice.
I didn't realize that something that small could affect the airflow enough to change the handling abilities . A bug ?
Just one won't, but the airflow disruption emerges from 100s of them all along the leading edges. If you get the chance check out the leading edges of other small aircraft like Cessnas etc and you'll see how many there truly is after a flight. It can be a total pain in the ass to get it all cleaned off
Thanks James
It looks bigger than the mosquito itself. 😷Thought no small insects could hang on that angel due to the high wind acelleration. Mosquito's power.😄
Hey, I’m a mosquito , and I don’t appreciate you calling me out. And only me😡. “Other insects” what? You afraid to say Butterfly? Awe, Hey, it’s you or me up here!
fly safely❤❤
Sorry but it sounds like you are saying BUTT WIPER lol.
I’m am very sorry for acting so immature about it but it made me giggle.
Great channel subbed and liked keep up the good work
Interesting... a similar device could be designed to clean the canopy.
It uses a Fly rod reel...LOL
Regards from Athens Greece..
I would love to see this on an airliner 🤣
"Mowskeeters" lol
You would think that would make more drag than the mosquitoes
And yet they cause the wing to not have laminar flow and therefore create much more drag.
Hard to believe that this task can't wait until each flight is concluded.
you would be surprised how much the bugs affect the lift and performance of a glider, if enough builds up tou could stall and crash,
@@bobconnolly190 Well Bob I've owned 4 aircraft and had 7 forced landings, none caused by bugs. Amittedly I've piloted a glider only twice and it was a blast. I have never heard of bug build up causing a stall. Ice for sure but can't imagine bug build up to be that significant. In my opinion this is a sales pitch for an item not needed.
The minimum speed increases, so the climb performance get worse and at higher speeds the drag is significant more. In areas with a lot of bugs it is really mandatory at modern sailplanes. You don't care at a plane about it because the wingspan is smaller, the profile is different and at the end you have an engine to compensate it.
@@SteFly Actually, even the big jets (and NASA) does care, for them it is about fuel efficiency (up to 30%).
NASA’s “Bug Team” >> th-cam.com/video/_Mx9rD-lmvM/w-d-xo.html
Wouldn't the device itself destroy the laminar flow?
Only for a short time. The benefit of cleaned wings is a lot bigger 👍
Nice one
Guarantee that adds a bigger drag and weight penalty than any bugs would ever do.
Why not just fly above the bug layer?