Why winglets

[Dizel8]

I meant to ask you, what is "Lauch", a new austrian lite beer or....?

 

[GVFlyer]

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The 777, as well as the CitationX, and Falcons don't need winglets because their wings were engineered properly to begin with. Please don't misunderstand, there are numerous examples of properly engineered wings getting winglets added later in life, but those applications exist where the wing is being asked to work harder than it was originally designed to work...The best way to make the point is to look at the wings of the most efficient/highest performing aircraft. They generally don't have winglets. Examples would be the 777, the aforementioned Falcons, CitationX, etc.

regards,
enigma

I just found this post. You should have begun it with, "Once upon a time," as most fairytails begin. The GV wing was developed with winglets by Gulfstream scientists on the same Boeing computers that had been used for 777 development. Final development was accomplished at the NASA Langley wind tunnel. The wing is a beautiful design unmatched by any aircraft in the industry. The entire top surface is a single bonded piece of extruded aluminum. It is an all lifting design including the radius going into the winglet, there are no washed-in or washed-out areas and no stalled regions. The winglets provide a forward thrust vector. There are no leading edge devices required to provide a min. Vref of 110 knots or any canoes needed to hide flap gear. The wing develops even more lift than the computers had predicted necessitating the addition of vortices generators to the horizontal stabilizer.

The proof is in how the aircraft performs. The G550 at maximum gross weight, 91,000 lbs., will always initially climb to at least 41,000 feet. 51,000 feet is available for up to the last 3 hours of flight. With 8 passengers, the G550 will fly 6750 nm at M.80, 6500 nm at M.83, 6000 nm at M.85 and 5,000 nm at M.87. How does this compare to the, "most efficient/highest performing aircraft" referenced in your post?

The Citation X is such an aeronautical blunder that with 8 passengers on board range is reduced by two-thirds at max speed. Low speed controlability has been such an issue that a series of aerodynamic patchs have been applied to improve safety. This has not been enough to keep one Midwestern Citation X operator from deeming them unsafe and parking theirs until they are sold.

GV