What is DELTA WING?

A DELTA WING is a wing whose shape when viewed from above looks like a triangle, often with its tip cut off. It sweeps sharply back from the fuselage with the angle between the leading edge (the front) of the wing and of the fuselage is often as high as 60 degrees and the angle between the fuselage and the trailing edge of the wing at around 90 degrees. Just as in image triangular surface shown. Delta shaped winged aircrafts are more stable at the high speed then in lower speed. Delta-wing airplanes lack horizontal stabilizers.

Design of DELTA WING

In DELTA WING design the leading edge is behind the shock wave made by the nose of that aircraft at supersonic speeds. This is the better and great improvement on other types of wing designs. It carries the highly swept wings delta shaped across the whole length of the aircraft which are structurally rigid and have high strength than a swept wing.

Types of DELTA WING

For improving Characteristics of DELTA WING design changes are made in designs which leads to the newer types delta wings.

Here are the types of delta wing

Tailed delta–It is mostly seen in soviet types of aircrafts. Such as MiG-21.In this Additional tail is add along with the delta wing to improve handling of the aircraft.

Cropped Delta- F-16 is an example of cropped delta. In this Tip of the delta wing is cut off to avoid tip drag at high angle of attacks.

Compound Delta–In this the inner part of the wing has a very high sweepback while the outer part has less sweepback.

Saab Draken is the aircraft of this type.

Double Delta or Cranked Arrow- This is somewhat similar to compound delta but in addition it is little much sweep from the back side internally to some angle .F-26 XL is the example of this type of wing.

BOTH Compound delta and Cranked arrow are used to create the high-lift vortex in more controlled fashion ,also reduces drag and helps in landing the delta at acceptably low speed.

Advantages of DELTA WING

As the higher angle of attack can be achieved the leading edge of the wing generates a vortex which energizes the flow, giving the delta a very high stall angle. A normal wing built for high speed use is typically dangerous at low speeds, but in this regime the delta changes over to a mode of lift based on the vortex it generates.

Another advantage of this design is easier manufacturing process while achieving structural strength along with bigger amount of interior for fuel and for other equipment. So it is very easy and relatively inexpensive to build.

Disadvantages of DELTA WING

The main disadvantage that can be usually seen in older tailless designs is lost of total available lift by turning up the wing trailing edge and the high induced drag.

DELTA WING AIRCRAFTS

DELTA wing aircrafts are fly at subsonic and supersonic speeds. Actually they are stable only at high speed they loose their stability at low speed this is because of the design of the delta wing.