Fuel efficiency and emissions are the two contexts in which aviation industry has invited bad press in perpetuity. A fair bit of scaling down can be expected in all of this with the Minix wing tip device. Developed by French aeronautics teacher Christian Hugues, the equipment which sits on the tip of an aircraft wing is a replacement for vertical and tilted winglets. Its aerodynamic design comprises cylindrical shape which reduces the drag by smoothening out and negating the high-pressure spiral vortices that form when a plane is in motion.
The Minix wing tip can be retrofitted to any aircraft wing. Apart from reducing the drag, the Minix system produces increased lift at the wing tip, which is especially useful during landing. Most importantly, according to Hughes the Minix wing tip is cheaper than a traditional winglet and on a recent prototype testing it showed a 6% gain in drag efficiency at Mach 0.8 which is the typical speed of an airliner.
