Here's a notion that gets away from how we usually think of wing design, inspired in part by this recent thread on the Rowe UFO. What if you set an arbitrary constraint on the footprint of a given wing, say 12' span by 12' chord for a single-seater. That means that any wing planform other than a perfect square (12' x 12' = 144 sq ft) will be giving up some wing area. A circular wing like the UFO, for example, comes out at (6' x 6' x pi = 113 sq ft), a 22% decrease. Is there any shape that would gain enough in efficiency over the square to make up for the lost wing area? Cheers, Matthew
