What Dreams May Come – The Requirements For A Patentable Invention

Somewhere in hangar in a Highveld town in South Africa dreams are being turned into reality. Jonker Sailplanes has its home in Potchefstroom, about 90 minutes' drive south west of Johannesburg and is a manufacturer of world-class, high-performance gliders. It is here that the Jonker brothers are living their dream. The brothers started from modest roots and as such buying a high-performance glider was simply not an option. Instead of leaving their castle in the sky, they decided that if they cannot buy it, they will build it and one early morning in December 2006, their JS-1 Revelation had her maiden voyage. Shortly afterwards the JS-1 took home the trophy in the South African 18m/Open Class Nationals competition. It has since raked in top accolades at international glider competitions and is a favourite high-performance glider amongst glider pilots across the globe.

A glider (or sailplane) relies only on its wings to fly, sailing on the air currents. It is normally towed or catapulted into the air and, gliding on the wind, it slowly sails back to earth. The wings are shaped in the form of an airfoil, which is what enables and keeps the plane airborne.

The shape of the airfoil creates a higher pressure below the wing than above the wing when air passes over it. This is called lift. In the case of gliders, the airfoil design is especially important, as the glider does not have an engine to help it create lift by way of forward thrust and its airfoil must be carefully designed so as to optimise the lifting effect of air streams.

The flow of air passing over the airfoil also creates drag. In engine-driven planes, the drag is easily overcome by the engine providing forward thrust. In the absence of an engine and in order to overcome this drag, the airfoil should create as little as possible drag to enable the glider to fly further and for longer periods of time.

In designing and optimising their glider, the Jonker brothers invented and patented a system for controlling the boundary layer and the nature of the airflow over the airfoil.

The Jonker brother obtained US Patent 8,251,319 ('319 patent), through the North-West University, which provides an improved airfoil specifically for gliders to control at which point along the airfoil the laminar flow is converted to turbulent flow when air moves over the wing. The transition point where laminar flow changes to turbulent flow is known as the boundary layer and the position of the boundary layer...