9:25 AM
By Sabrina Whetham
Wing in ground vehicles have been around for about 40 years yet very little is known about them. They have not been commercialized yet which is why not many people have heard or even seen it.
They work on the idea that the less in contact you are with a surface, the less friction you have to overcome which leads to greater speed of travel. Most boats work with this concept but these vehicles take it to a whole other level, they totally eliminate contact by floating above the ground or whatever surface they have to run on.
The contact is removed by having high pressure air pass through in between the bottom of the vehicle and the surface. This is what has come to be known as the ground effect. This eliminates a very large amount of friction which allows these vehicles to run faster and with more fuel efficiency.
These vehicles have more or less the same design as air planes although they do not have large motors and rely on the interaction of the air beneath them and the surface. This is why they only fly very close to the ground. They are like hovercrafts but without the fan underneath. They are propelled horizontally at first but eventually less power is needed from the engines since the wind carries the vehicle afterwards.
This design was done to first, make the vehicles run much faster. Secondly these vehicles are made to become more efficient. Most boats will expend a lot of fuel just to overcome friction with the water surface. More or less fifty percent of the losses of boats are due to friction. Eliminating those losses will contribute a very big amount to efficiency.
The concept was discovered by pilots during the early 1920s. They felt that at a certain point during landing that the planes they were piloting almost refused to go any lower. This was the point where aerodynamic ground effect kicked in. It already seemed like they were on the ground even though they were not really on it yet. Studies were done and eventually it was proven that flying close to the water surface was more efficient on fuel since less power was needed.
WIGs nowadays are mostly water based. There are some versions that are amphibious but no proper design has been developed for it yet. It has also been researched that for the designs to be truly efficient the vehicle size would have to increase by a lot. The WIG vehicles nowadays are just small boats that can carry only a very small amount of passengers but to make it the most efficient that it can be it should be able to reach the size of a 747 plane. Weather conditions also affect the WIGs a lot since it basically runs with the wind. A bigger design would also lessen the effect of the weather but no one has actually tried to make one that size to test out the theories.
Wing in ground vehicles are very promising when it comes to technological development. The concept is very good has high expectations although it is still hard to put it in to practice. The potential is great although a lot of funding would be needed to truly test it out.
A relatively new concept in fast transportation is wing in ground vehicles. About four decades of wing in ground aircraft have now been studied and refined. For more information visit Flying Yachts for the flying boat concept.
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