The Effect of Porosity on the Lift and Drag of Bird's Wings

Bird's wings are porous. The mass flux through the wings for various simulated wing loadings was measured and found to average about 2 x 10(exp -4) g/s.sq cm for one feather thickness at the average pigeon wing loading of 45 newtons/sq m. The calculated effect of the flux on lift was found to be less than 1/2 of 1%. Experiments at a typical pigeon flight Reynolds number of 10(exp 5) on flat plates with 3.5% and 14.5% open area spread over the trailing 58% of the chord showed that it is possible to both increase and decrease profile drag, relative to the drag on a non-porous flat plate, by < or = 5%. Stall on the porous plates occurred up to 3 deg earlier than stall on the non-porous plates. From lift calculations and drag measurements it is shown that the effects of porosity on the gliding characteristics of birds are negligible.