• Become a Premium Member today!

    Welcome aboard HomebuiltAirplanes.com, your destination for connecting with a thriving community of more than 10,000 active members, all passionate about home-built aviation.

    For a nominal fee of $99.99/year or $12.99/month, you can immerse yourself in this dynamic community and unparalleled treasure-trove of aviation knowledge.

    Why become a Premium Member?

    • Dive into our comprehensive repository of knowledge, exchange technical insights, arrange get-togethers, and trade aircrafts/parts with like-minded enthusiasts.
    • Unearth a wide-ranging collection of general and kit plane aviation subjects, enriched with engaging imagery, in-depth technical manuals, and rare archives.

    Become a Premium Member today and experience HomebuiltAirplanes.com to the fullest!

    Upgrade Now

Drag increase for a scaled-up aircraft

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Rapture

Active Member
Supporting Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2023
Messages
28
Location
Adelaide, Australia
This is a question for the aerodynamicists among us.

If a single seat aircraft was accurately scaled up in size to potentially result in a 2 seat aircraft, and let’s use an example where the dimensions of the single seater are scaled up by 30% and the mtow is also increased by 30%, for a given speed, what is the drag increase for the larger aircraft as a factor of that for the smaller aircraft, assuming that the mass of the larger aircraft at that speed is 30% more than for the smaller aircraft?

My reason for asking is that I need to determine the power requirements for a larger aircraft by extrapolating the power requirements for the smaller aircraft and I’d like to know whether I can simply say that the power requirements for the same speed at the 30% increased weight of the larger aircraft is 1.3x/1.69x/another factor.

Thanks
 
Back
Top