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19 votes

Can we add treadmill-like structures over the airplane surfaces to reduce friction, decrease drag and producing energy?

You can't reduce friction with machines. The nature of machines is that everything you do adds inefficiency. A moveable wing surface adds weight, complexity, and additional losses. Even if you did it ...
Tiger Guy's user avatar
  • 7,013
9 votes

Can we add treadmill-like structures over the airplane surfaces to reduce friction, decrease drag and producing energy?

Can you reduce friction by making a surface frictionless? Yes. Will that reduce drag? Most of the drag comes from lift. Without lift, the airplane falls out of the sky. Most of the rest of the drag ...
david's user avatar
  • 814
6 votes

Can we add treadmill-like structures over the airplane surfaces to reduce friction, decrease drag and producing energy?

Let's be honest here... From an engineering point of view, this is totally impractical and could never work with anything like current technology. Consider that the surface of an aircraft is not a ...
rghome's user avatar
  • 161
5 votes

Can we add treadmill-like structures over the airplane surfaces to reduce friction, decrease drag and producing energy?

Air on a wing or aileron or any airfoil does not slide on the surface of these, a very thin layer of air (boundary layer's contact surface) sticks to the surface and moves at the same speed as the ...
kamran's user avatar
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1 vote

Comparing accelerated vs constant motion; inspired by real life example. Is reducing mass the way to save energy in vehicle use?

Every time you brake you throw away energy, the difference in 1/2mv^2 from moving and being stopped. Internal combustion engines are also less efficiency accelerating, but the primary loss is that ...
Tiger Guy's user avatar
  • 7,013
1 vote
Accepted

Why is the fan efficiency zero at high flow rate?

But even if there is no pressure rise across a fan, the fan does cause the flow to happen by transferring energy (or power) to the fluid. Don't assume that the flow in that graph is driven by the fan ...
TimWescott's user avatar
  • 2,692
1 vote

How to calculate the optimum heat absorption rate of an object?

You face a complex problem and have three likely choices for the approach to solve it. The first is to do experiments on what you define as your measure of effectiveness versus flame size. Perhaps you ...
Jeffrey J Weimer's user avatar
1 vote

How to calculate the optimum heat absorption rate of an object?

You need to quantify both competing factors. This can be done empirically without too much difficulty. Determine the rate of heat loss from the water to the environment vs temperature. Simply start ...
Drew's user avatar
  • 1,991
1 vote

Can we add treadmill-like structures over the airplane surfaces to reduce friction, decrease drag and producing energy?

Unless the treadmills are independently powered, which they aren't according to your description, then they will only move if there is friction with the airflow to make them move. If we pretend there ...
Liamlah's user avatar
  • 11

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