Quadplanes?

Ok, so we've got monoplanes, Biplanes and Triplanes!
Was there any plans, anywhere, to design a Quadplane?
Stupid question? well sticking another wing on a biplane was probably considered "silly", yet right here over seventy years later a lot of people are talking about it, and are fans of it.

[rammjaeger]

Your question is not silly. There were really some quadplanes types designed, built and tested. Without my sources at hand I remember only one example immediately: an aircraft built by the German aviation pioneer EULER during the war. It did not see service like all other projects too.

Armstrong-Whitworth built one during WW1, the FK-10; I think that there were ony about 3 bulit, none used operationally. JimR

I once posted some pictures of quadplane-prototypes here. There were surprisingly many of them. Seems that when the success of the triplanes became known, many tried just more of the same stuff to get even better results. Trial and error. They did not perform well, so afaik none ever saw production, though several prototypes were flying.

If you are interested in earnest I can look after the two or three pics of the German quads I posted here.

regards

axel

I know this doesn't count but the Dr1 was really a quad with the axel fairing.

Axel has it right, there were many prototypes made utilizing four mainplanes. I could look up the particulars, but in essence, after the success of the Triplane, Idflieg asked all of the German manufacturers to design a quadraplane. Fokker did it, LFG Roland did it, Naglo, etc., none were very good.

Best,
Dave

[leo]

I wonder how much lift was derived from the Axel farings used on some of the Fokkers

The Armstrong-Whitworth F.K.10 was a two-seater quadruplane built for fighting and bombing. Of the fifty+ ordered by the RNAS, only eight were delivered. It had serious design flaws and I doubt if it ever saw service.

Leo,

I have wondered about that myself more than once, I know it probably wasn't very much because of the camber of the airfoil and the deep section and short cord. Also this plane didn't fly at anywhere near the speed it would need to make big lift.
All I have to compare it to is the wings on our Atlantic cars, 36 inches wide and 15 inches in cord, much smaller than the Fokker axel airfoils and we make almost a 1000 lbs of down force but we are going much faster. So it would be safe to say that the extra wing made enough to cover it's weight but did more to slow down a already underpowered plane down. It would be interesting to test a tripe without the axel wing to see.

[stephen]

Mark... you own/drive/work on Atlantics? We need to talk. I drive. 5th last week at Winchester, IN, 2/10's under track record. Wheeeeeee. Please send me your email address, as my 'puter won't pick yours up off this site for some reason.

Oh, yeah. Quadraplanes. I hear the axel fairing made more than enough lift to negate it's weight and help the overall lift just a bit. But my race car wins on every other count. Faster. Funner. Probably banks more in corners (34 deg). Stops much quicker. Doesn't blow over in storms...