Analysis of the Influence of Ground Effect on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Wing Using Lifting-Line Method

The lifting-line method based on Weissinger`s method is extended to be able to analyze the ground effect. The method is applied to predict the variation of aerodynamic performance due to ground effect for the elliptic wing with aspect ratio of 10 and the wing of human powered aircraft. While the vortex strength of the wing increases slightly, the downwash decreases significantly as the wing approaches to the ground. For the wing of human powered aircraft, the increment of lift at the height of 2m is 5% than the lift outside the influence of ground effect. The decrease of induced drag at the height of wing span is 10% and at the height of 2m is 55% than that out of ground effect.