Antilift wiper blade assembly with integral flexor and airfoil

An antilift wiper blade assembly for clearing a nonplanar vehicular windshield including a pressure-distributing superstructure having a plurality of supporting yoke elements and an elongated resilient wiping element, the improvement comprising:

• an elongated flexor interconnecting the wiping element and the superstructure, the flexor having an elongate channel extending over the entire length of the wiping element for receiving a retention bead portion of the wiping element;
• the channel of the flexor having a planar bottom wall, said bottom wall having a pair of inwardly directed spaced apart ledges of uniform thickness defining an opening in the bottom wall of the channel, the wiping element having a pair of grooves between the bead portion and a body portion for receiving the inwardly directed ledges of the bottom wall, the body portion of the wiping element having a wiping edge for contacting the surface of the windshield,
• the flexor having a pair of laterally outwardly extending flanges spaced above the bottom wall of the flexor and engageable with claws of the yoke elements, and
• the flexor having an airfoil integrally formed with one of said ledges of the bottom wall, said airfoil having a uniform thickness equal to the thickness of the bottom wall of the flexor, said airfoil extends laterally from said bottom wall defining a laterally extending portion and being uniformly curved upwardly from a tangent to a plane coincident with the bottom wall of the channel defining a curved and upright portion to terminate in a plane transverse to the plane of the bottom wall, the laterally extending portion of the airfoil and the curved and upright portion of the airfoil are offset from the channel to minimize a detrimental effect on the flexural capability of the channel of the flexor whereby an air stream stalking the airfoil will generate an aerodynamic force on the blade assembly normal to the windshield adding to the pressure of the wiper arm to urge the blade into conformance with the surface of the windshield.