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Delta wing attach looking for ideas

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Wild Bill

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 11, 2013
Messages
111
Location
Vidalia, GA
Guys I've been sketching out various things and what seems to always meet my needs is a flying wing/delta design.
This would be a small light single seat 40-80hp plane that could meet LSA.

One of the design challenges is what to do about attaching the wing panels. I've looked at a bunch of different ways to build the wing. Probably the best method is foam/composite skins over just a few ribs with a composite spar front and rear. Building the skins alone is a lot of work however and would obviously require the construction of 4 relatively large molds unless I went fully symmetrical.
Even the most basic method would be somewhat costly, and take up a lot of real estate.
Full core foam/glass is too heavy.
So I've considered a fiberglass or built up wood spar with foam or built up ribs and ply skins.
An obvious issue is what to do about the attachment points. The main spar will meet up with the fuselage at quite an angle. This will be aggravated further by my desire to have a slight amount of anhedral in the wings.

One idea is to build the spar where it's perpendicular to the root rib. This means having the spar enter aft of the thickest root portion. And obviously the spar would be much harder to build due to the complex shape required going through at this angle.

So, now what I'm looking at is using (2) 8'X4" OD aluminum tubes. The root rib and the rib on the outboard end of the tube would transfer structural loads to stressed skins. Again not a perfect solution but I think it might have merit. Given the amount of taper in a wing panel like this load distribution is very favorable.

As I mentioned above the plan is to have a fuselage. I've considered not having one but not sure I'd go that route.
See attached picture for a rough idea of the planform. Root chord is 8' (2.43M) panel span is 7' (2.13M)
Thickest point on root section will be in the 10" range
 
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