rcgldr said:
True but those velocities normally do not cancel out (more on this in the last paragraph).
Momentum needs to cancel out, not velocity. Can you further substantiate this claim? How do you relate that to the fact that a wing can literally be modelled as a vortex, as already been shown by Prandtl in 1918 I believe?
rcgldr said:
Switch this to using the air as a frame of reference, with initial velocity 0 before a wing passes through a volume of air, and mostly downwards (lift) and somewhat forwards (drag) velocity after a wing passes through that volume of air.
Ok, I don't know how to make it more clear than I already did, what I'm saying is that there is no energy added to the flow, and therefore that Bernoulli is valid
if and only if you look at the problem from a reference frame that is attached to the wing!
So if you use 'air as reference frame' (let's not use fluid as a reference frame, it is earth-fixed with zero wind or something) then you can indeed not use Bernoulli. But Bernoulli is used in calculations over a wing or a propeller all the time. In fact, I'm making a living by doing that...
rcgldr said:
In this frame of reference, the wing increases the kinetic and pressure energy of the air immediately behind the wing. The average velocity where the affected air's pressure returns to ambient is called the exit velocity. This also explains how the air eventually transmits the weight of an aircraft onto the surface of the earth.
You're mixing up your models sir... 'exit velocity' is not used in flow over a wing or over a propeller. An actuator disk has an 'exit velocity', or the flow through a nozzle or shroud. But those are not the cases we are talking about now.
rcgldr said:
That pressure jump can be explained as the air streams above and below a wing converging (colliding) behind the wing, with a net downwards change of angle in the converged streams.
That's just BS. A fluid cannot sustain a pressure jump unless you are going supersonic. Talking about a pressure jump you were referring to the actuator disk model. The actuator disk is a model where you
apply a pressure jump as a means to
model the
effect of a propeller, not the propeller itself!
rcgldr said:
Another way to consider this is a glider in a steady (non-accelerating) descent, gravitational potential energy decreases, energy of the air increases, conservation of energy.
From the earth's frame of reference yes, from the glider's frame of reference no, because from the glider's frame of reference there is no altitude loss...
rcgldr said:
From the air's frame of reference, most of that energy increase is related to downwash (lift), a small amount of it to forward wash (drag), and smaller still amounts related to sound and temperature.
True, although changes in energy due to sound and temperature are many orders of magnitude lower than due to drag, viscosity, turbulence...
rcgldr said:
From the aircraft | wing's frame of reference, there is still energy conservation,
True
rcgldr said:
so the energy of the air is still increased,
Wrong. This is where you are mistaken. From the wing's frame of reference there is
no energy added. For energy to be added to the system you need you need a
moving boundary. But since you are looking at the problem from the wing's perspective,
there is no moving boundary!
rcgldr said:
but a small component of drag is in the direction of gravity.
?? I don't know what you mean here.
rcgldr said:
In the case of Nimbus 4 glider, with a 60:1 glide ratio at 110 kps, I doubt that small component of drag in the direction of gravity accounts for much.