The winglet and red navigation light on the wing tip of a South African Airways Boeing 747-400

A wing tip is the part of the wing that is most distant from the fuselage of a fixed-wing aircraft.

Because the wing tip shape influences the size and drag of the wingtip vortices, tip design has produced a diversity of shapes, including:

• Squared-off
• Aluminium tube bow
• Rounded
• Hoerner style
• Winglets
• Drooped tips
• Raked wingtips
• Tip tanks
• Sails
• Fences
• End plates

Wing tips are also an expression of aircraft design style, so their shape may be influenced by marketing considerations as well as by aerodynamic requirements.

Wing tips are often used by aircraft designers to mount navigation lights, anti-collision strobe lights, landing lights and identification markings. On fighter aircraft, they may also be fitted with hardpoints, for mounting drop tanks and weapons systems, such as missiles and electronic countermeasures.

[edit] Gallery

The wing tip of a Quad City Challenger II, formed with an aluminum bow

The wing tip of a Grumman American AA-1, showing its Hoerner style design

A Piper PA-28 Cherokee with winglets

[edit] See also

• Wingtip device

[edit] References

• Aerodyn Wing Tip Devices accessed 5 January 2007

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