Just a fun little thought experiment I got distracted by the other day…
What would a wing with 100% (max) camber look like? Think about it a minute. I thought at first that if 0% curve is a straight line, would 100% curve not be a circle? But it turns out I don’t actually know what camber means.
So we’ll start with that. Camber is the curvature of the wing, the camber line being the line of points halfway between the upper and lower surface. The chordline is the straight line from the leading edge to the trailing edge. The max camber is the longest line between the chordline and the camber line that is perpendicular to the camber line.
In a symmetrical airfoil, the camber is 0, and the chordline and the camber line are one and the same. We’ll define the chord length as 1; and in a normal airfoil, with a camber of, say, 3%, the maximum distance the camber line deviates from the chordline is 0.03.
Raise the camber to 100%, and the distance is 1. The same length as the chord, and perpendicular. So rather than a circle, our airfoil looks something like this:
But usually the max camber isn’t located right in the middle, so maybe it would look more like this:
Clearly there’s a reason camber tends to stay below 40%! The thing looks about as aerodynamic as a brick wall. Possibly worse. I’m really not sure what effect that gaping hole in the bottom might have. Someday I will be able to simulate these things, but that day is not today.
So, just in case this very pressing question ever crossed your mind, now we know.