How is “lift” different from “glide”?
Glide is about the distance your foil is able to make without any input (pumping, wave, wing…).
Lift is about when your foil take off.
Lift is upward force generated by water flow over the foil (generated by energy) minus drag (caused by foil and components).
Glide is distance travelled for the foil to go from a certain speed back to board hitting water without any energy being introduced. This is governed by drag and of course the speed that you stop the energy introduction.
Aspect Ratio (AR) impacts glide - the higher the more you tend to get.
Foil area size impacts lift.
Foil section - how the wing is shaped - impacts both and is nuanced.
You’ll get a better answer I’m pretty sure
Lift makes you go “Oh shit” and Glide makes you go “Weeeeeeeeeeeee”.
Lift and glide are related through the drag a wing produces. To create lift a foil creates a momentum change in the fluid it operates through, this inherently causes some resistance to movement (drag).
At high speeds a wing operates at a low angle of attack to create sufficient lift, but without additional energy added, drag will cause the wing to slow down. as the speed decreases the angle of attack must increase to produce the same lifting force, this causes an increase in drag slowing the wing faster. At some point the combination of angle of attack / speed will cause the wing to stall.
A glide-y wing has a high lift to drag ratio, ie it produces lift will less drag, meaning it will not slow down and stall as fast (move further). High aspect foils are glide-y because they have high lift to drag ratios, and are more efficient than lower aspect designs. This is because their wetter surface area produces more lift at low angles of attack (less draggy angles) than lower aspect wings.
One small clarification:
Lift is, per definition, perpendicular to drag so there is nothing to subtract between the two.
Correct, thanks, I was mulling on the energy involved to create the water flow to create the lift which is impacted by drag of board and then foil, and reworded it incorrectly