Strutless LEI designs

Section 6 of the paper can be thought of as Rolf Luchsinger’s 2004 answer to, will air beams scale, which is similar to the question Tallak is asking here. His answer is not really, and here is the physics to back that up.

Control of the pressure is an issue with any inflatable structure. That should be less of an issue with a tensiarity beam than an air beam because of the lower volumes and pressures, for equal strength. You could try to do calculations about when it is better to use one or the other, air beam vs tensairity beam (vs rigid wing). Since there are people doing each of the above, each must have their advantages and disadvantages.

I’m wondering, what would a LEI kite look like that had a Reynolds number of 7 million?

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