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Ground Effect and the Crash?
A discussion with another old Skymaster pilot raised an interesting discussion point on the impact of ground effect.
An aircraft flying at or very nearly at Vne, descending into ground effect, would see the airspeed increase as the wing became more efficient, with the concurrent reduction in induced drag, assuming the power setting remained constant.
A second point is whether there is any impact on the loads and stresses if an aircraft enters into ground effect in a bank -- i.e., one wing is in ground effect, while the other is not.
I don't know if the load changes related to ground effect have ever been studied AT HIGH SPEEDS. Does anyone have knowledge of that?
To my knowledge, ground effect research is typically focused on low speed impacts, improvements in the efficiency of the wing while in ground effect at the extremes of the envelope (meaning that the aircraft is able to fly in ground effect at an extreme weight or temperature, but is beyond the envelope and unable to climb out of ground effect until sufficient weight of fuel is burned off, etc.).
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