ORIGINAL: Allfat
ORIGINAL: brett65
ORIGINAL: CGRetired
Brett: Thin means a lower coefficient of lift because of the shape of the wing. The airfoil is smaller in diameter (for lack of a better description) so it has less lift, so it must be flown faster.. and it will fly faster because it has somewhat less drag. It all ''factors in'' when considering how the plane will fly.
That's just my view on it, I could be wrong.
My thought would be that it wouldn't have a lower coefficient of lift, but only lower coefficient of drag. I would really like to know if the thickness has anything to do with lift.
The thickness of the wing does add lift, as well as drag. Drag on an airplane is divided into induced drag, skin drag, and parasitic drag. Induced drag is drag that is introduced with lift, and the two are related to each other. More lift equals more induced drag. Skin drag is the drag from the air sticking to the surface of the plane, the more surface area, the more drag. Parasitic drag has to do with wheels and stuff sticking off of the plane, so that is not really a concern to the wing.
As the wing profile gets thicker, the skin drag increases because there is more area on the wing, that is not a difficult concept to grasp. However, induced drag also increases. This comes from an increase in lift. So a thicker wing at the same speed and same angle of attack will produce more lift than a thinner wing.
Don't trust me, go to this website and play around with it to come up with your own conclusions.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html
Set the angle of attack at some positive amount (5 degrees or so), set camber to 0.0, then adjust the thickness from thin to thick and watch the lift number. It will increase with the thickness.