a round flat circular wing

hello everyone,first i want to say i am no aircraft engineer but i design aircraft when i am bored, which is alot in this world,anyway most get deleted but lately i have been doing round aircraft that resemble modern ufos but with modern tech,manned and unmanned, lately i have had this idea of a round or semi square flat wing that creates lift no matter what angle you are at, i know a circular wing that goes upward exists and has been somewhat tested, instead of upward they would just go flat,landing and takeoff can be done with something similar to the British harrier jump jet, useing the (what are in my designs 3-4 small ) jet engine for landing ability but also use it for some forward propulsion, some of my designs use electric fans similar to the f35 but going out through nozzles like the harrier.

thoughts? opinions?

a reply to: theboarman

Does it look like this?

a reply to: visitedbythem

mine is a 21st century re-imagining of that with more emphasis on ''wings'' that would work

a reply to: theboarman

Not being an engineer or anything should stop me from donating my 2 cents, you'd think?
The way you're describing it the mental image I got was of a circle with possibly a bubble/hump/dumpling shape that would be for electrical gear/necessary equipment or pilots?

For whatever reason something round with flattened edges strikes me as problematic with cross winds or shear? Same principle why flying wings work or frisbees don't catch a sidewind an drop like a rock. If that makes sense?
On the other hand I'd love to be the first person screaming "OMG!! A Pierogi UFO!!!"

It's great you're creative enough to be doing stuff like this!!

a reply to: theboarman

During WW2, there were two circular winged craft developed basically for carrier operations. Here's a wiki about it and two videos.

Vought V-173, Wiki
Vought XF5U, Wiki

a reply to: NightFlight

Interesting video. Thanks!

originally posted by: theboarman
hello everyone,first i want to say i am no aircraft engineer but i design aircraft when i am bored, which is alot in this world,anyway most get deleted but lately i have been doing round aircraft that resemble modern ufos but with modern tech,manned and unmanned, lately i have had this idea of a round or semi square flat wing that creates lift no matter what angle you are at, i know a circular wing that goes upward exists and has been somewhat tested, instead of upward they would just go flat,landing and takeoff can be done with something similar to the British harrier jump jet, useing the (what are in my designs 3-4 small ) jet engine for landing ability but also use it for some forward propulsion, some of my designs use electric fans similar to the f35 but going out through nozzles like the harrier.

thoughts? opinions?

I'm a professional aerospace engineer and a private pilot. I design things that fly (aircraft and spacecraft) for a living. Here are a few facts about circular wings.

What you are actually describing is an all-wing aircraft where the wing happens to have a circular planform.

A wing can generate aerodynamic lift when it's moving forward through the air with a given speed. The magnitude of the speed and the direction it's moving taken together define the velocity vector (speed x direction). When the front edge of the wing tilts up relative to the velocity vector, that's considered to be the pitch direction. That pitch-up creates what's called an aerodynamic angle of attack of the wing relative to the velocity vector. That angle of attack causes the airflow over the top of the wing to be faster than the flow under the bottom of the wing and that difference is what causes more pressure on the bottom than the top, thereby generating lift. So, no angle of attack, no lift.

When you refer to a flat disk, maybe you mean literally a thin disk that's flat on the top and flat on the bottom (a "flat plate" disk) like it was stamped out of a piece of sheet metal. Such a disk will generate lift if it has a positive pitch angle, but it won't be very efficient. It will generate a lot of drag compared to the lift it generates. This is why wings that are designed to fly at low subsonic speeds have a rounded nose on the front and a sharp trailing edge. That is the classic airfoil cross-section.

There's no reason you can't have a classic airfoil cross-section on a circular planform wing to improve its efficiency, but then the wing will have a nose and tail. It will only be efficient when it's flying nose forward and tail aft. It won't fly at all if the relative wind is cross ways or backward over the wing. That is no different than with a conventional rectangular wing. So if you want to have a wing that's efficient as possible, it has to have an airfoil cross-section instead of being flat, in which case, it will only fly well when the nose of the airfoil is pointed into the wind.

The other factor that affects the efficiency of a wing is the aspect ratio, which is approximately the wingspan divided by the width of the airfoil section. For a general aviation aircraft, the wingspan will often be approximately 10 times the width of the airfoil section (an aspect ratio of ≈ 10). For a circular wing, the wingspan and airfoil width are the same, so the aspect ratio ≈ 1, and that's also lousy for efficiency.

The upshot of all this is that you can design a subsonic aircraft consisting of a flat plate circular wing, but it will have really lousy efficiency. As the old saying goes, you can make a barn door fly if you put a big enough motor on it.

The other thing that we haven't even talked about is stability and control. Basically, a flat plate circular wing doesn't have any preferred direction of flight in yaw, which means it is very difficult to make it fly straight and level. You either have to put massive tail surfaces on it to give it some static stability and/or have an active stabilization autopilot (like the F-117 "wobbly goblin").

And finally, there is the weight distribution problem. In order for a flying wing to have static stability in pitch, the center of mass of the vehicle has to be located approximately 1/4 of the way aft of the nose. For a circular wing, that means that half of the mass has to be crammed in the forward 1/4 of the circle. That's really, really difficult to do, when you consider that the most massive parts of the aircraft are usually the motors and the fuel.

In short, it's really, really difficult to design a circular, all-wing aircraft and even if you do, you'll have a total dog of an aircraft.

BTW, this is how we know that real flying saucer UFOs are not flying by generating aerodynamic lift. But that's a topic for another day.

a reply to: theboarman

originally posted by: 1947boomer
The upshot of all this is that you can design a subsonic aircraft consisting of a flat plate circular wing, but it will have really lousy efficiency. As the old saying goes, you can make a barn door fly if you put a big enough motor on it.

Did you guys ever hear of Project 1794? It was a classified project in 1956 for something like that and was declassified in 2001. My take on the design was sort of like that old saying, it looked like they were trying to put 6 radially oriented turbine engines in "barn door" shaped like a disc to make it fly, and it doesn't look like an efficient design at all for reasons you have suggested.

Project Planning Report Project 1794 Final Development Report

BTW, this is how we know that real flying saucer UFOs are not flying by generating aerodynamic lift. But that's a topic for another day.

I'm not even sure what you mean by "real flying saucer UFOs", but I suspect there could be a backstory to Project 1794 that goes something like "all these people see these disc-shaped craft flying in the sky, maybe the aliens know something we don't know so we should look into making a disc shaped craft?" and voila, project 1794, but it seems someone realized on paper that it wasn't a great idea and I don't think it was ever actually built.

If you look at the photos of a "flying disc" from Edwards AFB, the airforce may admit they may look like a disc but they claim it's actually a balloon and they know what balloon it is, so just because people see something that looks like a disc, doesn't mean it's really a disc. The photos do show what looks like a disc-shaped object though or at least it's wider than it is tall so it looks like it could be a side view of a disc.

Found? Gordon Cooper's 1957 UFO film "sent...to...Washington...never to be seen again"

Plate 620s:

There is this:

www.designation-systems.net...

Pye Wacket (love the name) was an LDM - Lenticular Defence Missile launched from an XB70 Valkyrie.