parafoil
Sign in to savethumb|200 px|Illustrations from Jalbert's 1966 patent, showing the keels and the airfoil shape.thumb|200 px|The NASA X-38 prototype makes a gentle lakebed landing at the end of a July 1999 test flight at the Dryden Flight Research Center.
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Patents
- See also
- References
thumb|200 px|Illustrations from Jalbert's 1966 patent, showing the keels and the airfoil shape.thumb|200 px|The NASA X-38 prototype makes a gentle lakebed landing at the end of a July 1999 test flight at the Dryden Flight Research Center.
A parafoil is a nonrigid (textile) airfoil with an aerodynamic cell structure which is inflated by the wind. Ram-air inflation (created by dynamic air pressure from the parachute's motion through the air) forces the parafoil into a classic wing cross-section. Parafoils are most commonly constructed out of ripstop nylon.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “parafoil” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.