Strategic flying tanker KC-135 Stratotanker is an absolute veteran of the U.S. air force, adopted in the distant 1954. Suffice it to say that the “youngest” of them this year will be 55 years old.
During this time, flying tankers has experienced many upgrades, but recently the specialists of the air found an incredibly simple way to save fuel this plane-giant. It only takes a bit to change the location… of the wipers on his windshield.
Initially in unusable state they were in horizontal position. The studies conducted on the basis of the air National guard Rickenbacker, were used the methods of computational fluid dynamics for modeling the nose of the KC-135 and aerodynamic efficiency of the windshield wipers that are in horizontal and vertical positions.
Just moving the wiper to a vertical position, the researchers were able to increase the efficiency of the aircraft at a cruising speed of 0.8 percent and after installing a new, more subtle wiper this indicator has improved another 0.2 %.
At first glance, the figures are more than the perilous, however, if they multiply on 396 units KC-135 standing in the air force and National guard, who “used” in 2018-2019 1.32 billion liters of fuel, with the help of new wiper during this time, you would save $ 7 million. And if they were installed in 1965 when the arms were adopted last KC-135, the savings would have amounted to 385 million dollars.
Source — U. S. Air Force