Noting the last video, I don't quite understand why there is so much water vapor from wings on this plane compared to none on others?

 

Edited. This happens when the humidity is right and the wing is generating a lot of low pressure ie flaps deployed. Basic aerodynamics and meterology will be good to understand if you are interested in this. There is a lot of material on the web to help you understand basic flight theory.

 

Water in the air vaporizes into its gaseous state, then if allowed to cool that will condense. Your windows will get condensation if the surface temp is at dew point temperature. In other words if it is a cool surface you should get condensation.

 

Same with cool drinks on a hot day. Pull a cool drink out and dry it up on the outside, and within minutes you will have droplets forming on the outside due to the cool surface temp. The air around it has molecules of H2O in it and will cool upon touching the bottle and form into its solid state.

Found a good image of it.

 

What is this vortex you speak of that normal wings don't create?

 

Found sort of an explaination of vortex....

 

 

The "slender delta" wing on Concorde has the appearance of total simplicity. In spite of this, there was probably no one area on the aircraft where more attention was payed to its design and construction.

 

On the wing of a traditional subsonic aircraft there may be well over 50 moveable devices, including those for control and trim of the aircraft and the often complex flaps and leading edge slats for the generation of additional lift at slower speeds.

 

Concorde has none of this; in fact the Concorde delta wing only has 6 trailing edge "elevons" that replace the traditional elevators and ailerons that allow control of both pitch and roll of the aircraft.

 

As aircraft speeds have increase over time, the amount of "sweepback" that can be seen on the wings has also increased. The slender delta that features on Concorde takes this one step further. Looking head-on at the Concorde wing, it does not just sweep back (by 55 degrees) but it twists and droops, making what appears to be a very simple design in reality very complex.

 

It is the intricacies of this design that allows Concorde to generate sufficient lift at low speeds by increasing the angle of attack of the wing, but also to perform very efficiently at high speeds as it generates very little drag.

 

On a traditional aircraft's wing a swirling vortex is formed only at the wing tips. On a delta wing at low speeds, such a vortex is formed nearly enough along the entire wing surface and produces most of the lift in those conditions.

 

With Concorde's high angle of attack at low speeds the amount of vortex lift that is generated by the wing increases significantly, and this is fundamental for Concorde to be able to fly at slow speeds during take off and landing.

 

This is best illustrated on a damp day when the vortex can be seen to fully envelop the upper surface of the wing, when the aircraft is flying at slow speeds and at a high angle of attack. The picture I posted above shows the way the vortex forms above the wing and causes the water vapour in the air to condense, due to the reduction of pressure.

 

The final benefit of the large delta shape is the ground effect that is created when the aircraft comes in to land. As the aircraft gets closer to the ground, the downwash of the air between the wing and the ground creates a cushion. Due to this air cushion, a landing on Concorde will tend to be very smooth even though it is at a much higher speed.

 

The Concorde wing is the best compromise between a wing that provides sufficient lift at low speeds but also has the right profile for flying at supersonic speeds. The supersonic cruise demands a long chord, relatively slight thickness and short wingspan, that provide a great deal of lift in the high speed domain with very little drag.

 

During the design of the wing, over 5000 hours of wing tunnel testing were carried out to modify its camber, droop and twist, to ensure that the vortex that would be formed along the wing would be stable at high angles of attack.

 

Source

On a traditional aircraft's wing a swirling vortex is formed only at the wing tips. On a delta wing at low speeds, such a vortex is formed nearly enough along the entire wing surface and produces most of the lift in those conditions.

 

With Concorde's high angle of attack at low speeds the amount of vortex lift that is generated by the wing increases significantly, and this is fundamental for Concorde to be able to fly at slow speeds during take off and landing.

 

This is incorrect. It is not something specific to the Concorde's wing, this happens to all swept wings and is called spanwise flow. It can even be seen to a very small degree on a rectangular wing. From one of my favorite books: Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators:

 

 

 

Here is the creation of the vortices on a straight wing:

 

 

 

 

Here it is with tuffs behind a delta wing like the Concorde's:

 

 

 

The spanwise flow on a swept wing:

 

 

 

The reason why you see so much condensation is that the wing has to get it's lift from a much smaller aspect ratio wing. This means that it has short stubby wings that must produce the lift which means at low airspeed high angle of attack situations it will decrease the pressure over the wing by quite a bit which forms the condensation.

I think there is a little confusion of wingtip vortices here.

 

Wingtip vortices are something that are invisible and not really in this topic: http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/media/PHAK%20-%20Chapter%2004.pdf

 

I think an explanation of Bernoulli's principle is called for. Chris has done a good job in refuting some of the confusion.

http://www.faa.gov/l... Chapter 03.pdf

 

Search this forum, there seems to be a debate about it. But the science is not wrong. If you measure the force created by lift of wing using Bernoulli principle it will give you the the value of which aircraft wing designers use. Aircraft wing designers aren't wrong, are they?