Rahul M wrote:thanks vic. so if the news of asymmetric wing stall is correct, the likely cause is differential use of ailerons ?
the other reasons, (pax more on one side, ice formation etc are not that likely IMO)
I doubt the the wings themselves are so asymmetrically made that they lead to one stalling before the other.
Rahul, Its possible to have an asymmetric wing drop even when the wings are perfect mirror image of each other and the plane's attitude is perfectly symmetric. The turbulent airflow itself is chaotic in nature. You can have large flow separation started on one wing just a fraction of moment before the other due to very nature of turbulent flow.
Once an IIT prof told the story (he used to work in HAL earlier) how they encountered the issue of random wing drop on some aircraft (can't remember which) and they could find nothing wrong with the wings. Later on some experts from some lab (may be NAL) figured out that the very nature of flow makes its almost impossible to have perfectly symmetric flow as such and one wing or the other would drop depending on the situation for that particular plane. They figured out another way to make the stall smooth IIRC.
Now do we know if IJT issue is random wing drop?? I mean either of the two wings could drop and there is no preference?? Probably the it has steep and sudden stall characteristics which could explain the wing drop. In that case, they might be trying to make the stall smoother, as Indranil was theorizing few posts ago.
There is scarcely any technical info available regarding the actual issue. Pity our agencies don't publish much of their research in a way which is more accessible to average joe like NASA does.
