Aircraft Definition and 337 Threads

An airship is any powered, steerable aircraft that it is inflated with a gas that is lighter than air. Hydrogen isn't the only gas usable for airships, but it is the only gas that really makes sense. That is because it has good lift to volume, is relatively inexpensive and is common as dirt...

Suppose that an aircfract somehow is not moving. Then I would expect the sound waves it produces to spread out uniformely in a spherical fashion. Now imagine a airplane traveling at approximately the speed of sound. In this case, if the airplane produces a wave at point A and after a time T the...

I want to know about how to get more lift from aircraft wings without increasing engine power and wingspan.

Hello , I am thinking to work on a RC aircraft ( Airplane ) that can load a small supply of Medical Firstaid in small range. So I need to make it fast and stable. So I'm thinking to use a small Turbo-jet engine in it which will be home-made. Please suggest me -- (1) Is that makes any sense ...

I want to piggyback from this thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/aircraft-guidance-in-a-crosswind.198836/ this is the question I am attempting to solve, however this thread has been locked I have found that you can express the two velocities the following way at any point in the...

Homework Statement The single wheel of an aircraft can undergo a max of 7500N at a vertical velocity of 8 m/s on landing. The vertical spring moves in SHM and has a stiffness of 600N/mm. The systems vertical damper has a damping coefficient of 38 x 10^3 Ns.m-1 Homework Equations F=Kx...

Boeing and Japan's Space Agency Are Testing LIDAR on Aircraft http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/news/a27595/boeing-japan-space-agency-develop-lidar-planes/ LIDAR, The equivalent of radar, but with lasers, could help aircraft track weather...

So I'm watching a documentary on supersonic flight, and the challenges they describe seem SO daunting that I couldn't help but wonder: Wouldn't it just be easier to fly above (most of) the atmosphere? There must be an altitude where sonic booms no longer reach the ground and wind pressure no...

Homework Statement Consider an aircraft turbine as in the figure below. In the reference frame of the turbine, air of density ##\rho_0## comes into the turbine with speed ##U_0## through the entrance with cross sectional area ##S_0##. In the combustion zone, air is mixed with the fuel and...

I try to understan this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number What does "... such as between an aircraft model in a wind tunnel and the full size version." mean? Why cannot we use a full size version in a wind tunnel or why cannot model be full size? Thank you.

I am stuck in the middle of building a circuit for an aircraft starting mockup that will train our students to correctly start the aircraft without accidentally re-engaging the starter and thus causing very costly maintenance actions. The system is 12v. We would like to have a 10 second delay...

If I wanted a higher value for pitching moment due to a change in pitch rate, Mq, what are some design alterations I might make to an aircraft to incorporate this. I am guessing changes to the airfoil or maybe the tailplane but I am not sure what changes you would make to get a desired result.

Homework Statement Recently did a lab experiment were 3 different flight conditions were applied to the same aircraft to see how it affected the aircraft dynamics, we analysed the results by two different methods 1.) calculate using the flight coniditons with a formula sheet and 2.) we printed...

Hi Great Engineers, Need you help. I am required to calculate drag load on sticker to ensure it is not peeling off in operation. The vehicle may moves as fast as 220 km/hr with rectangular sticker size of 30 cm x 40 cm, thickness 0.0635 mm on its body. Wind direction is parallel to 40 cm length...

Homework Statement An aircraft flies with its wings tilted, in order to fly in a horizontal circle of radius r. The aircraft has mass 4.00 x 104 Kg and has a constant speed of 250ms-1 . with the aircraft flying in this way, two forces are acting on the plane, P [lift] and W [weight which is...

I'm interested in the knowledge that was available to aircraft engineers in the period 1900-1920. specifically the thermodynamics and mechanical engineering knowledge generally available, like in how much detail were the calculations on the performance, or the cooling of engines done, how...

I'm having quite a deal of trouble trying to figure this out. Say, for example, you wanted to have a statically stable aircraft. How do you determine what the signs (positive or negative) of the control derivates need to be for this condition to be satisfied ( CXα, CZα, Cmα, Cmq, CZδe, etc) ?

I am working on a range extender for full size electric aircraft. It is a turbine located under the cowling, protruding only 8 inches. On my full size static model, the turbine can produce 600 watts with the prop blast v measuring 38 mph. If we could fly the plane (we can't, no wings) at 80...

Hello, me and other engineering students at my university are designing an electric aircraft and we are hoping to implement the technology that NASA is currently working on, http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-electric-research-plane-gets-x-number-new-name Basically how it works is you have...

Which instrument is used to measure altitudes in aircraft's

I am curious as to the components of FDRs that allow them to sustain such g-forces and immense heat. Surely it's not just a steel box filled with paraffin wax. What alloys are used? what shapes are used in internal construction to prevent crushing/penetration? What do they insulate with and how...

I played around with various parameters to air foils using Foilsim http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/foil3.html What I found was that for a given wing length, a smaller chord gives a better lift/drag ratio. This will make the wing area small, hence the total lift will be small and there...

Does anyone have any information about the Taranis pilot less military aircraft?

Hi - I just want to know if I'm approaching this correctly. I'm trying to calculate the equilibrium velocity of a propeller-driven aircraft when supplied a given amount of power. I'm iterating: min_velocity = 0.01 max_velocity= 200 aircraft_velocity = 5 for i in range(steps): force = 0.5 *...

Does the weight of a propeller have any effect on the thrust provided? For example, if there are are two propellers of the same size same speed but different weight, would the one with more weight have a greater or lesser thrust? also would effect do the number of blades(faces) have on the way a...

Hi! I am a student who is passionate about engines and mechanics (although the major I'm pursuing is CS.I believe we must not inhibit our intellectual curiosity). The following link will take you to the picture of an uncovered General Electric Next Generation Turbofan engine used by the 787...

I am planning to measure the wing area of a Spitfire aircraft. I am going to use double integral formula, but firstly I need to derive the continuous function for the region of interest. Also, How to do that? I searched the entire internet and only found out the wing span of that aircraft...

Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks, and CATIA. I don't know which one are better to design an aircraft ? Which one should i pick for a beginner ?

Is it good if an aircraft has lot of streamlines ?

Does the vapour cone from a high-speed aircraft correspond to the Mach angle of its sonic boom? What is the general physics responsible for a vapour cone, and why does it resemble the shape of a cone? Basically I'm wondering if this : corresponds to this :

This is a continuation of the archived thread from https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-to-make-inductor-coils.570700/. Judging by the list of needed coils, I suspect the author was looking to build VHR AM Aircraft Receiver as described here...

Homework Statement As a project, I have had to design and build a scaled down version of a glider wing. The actual glider wing would be made of aluminium and have a length of 7.5m and have a uniformly distributed load of 30kg/m^2, the scaled down version is 0.9m and made of balsa wood. I want...

I'm having my degree FYP with the title of 'water landing: conceptual design of float component of seaplane upon touchdown'. 1. ) I need guideline for calculating impact force of the seaplane when it touchdown on the water surface. 2. ) Regarding the landing time and landing distance. I'm...

Hello everyone. I'm currently doing a research on aircraft performance for my school project, which require me to design an airfoil to suit a specific mission. I'm not very familiar with the formulas used for calculating the aircraft performance and I would like to seek help from the forum...

Recently I discussed aircraft materials with an engineer and we discussed the now famous carbon fiber materials being used for aircraft construction. But he mentioned something I never heard about before called Boron-Aluminum which supposedly is an advanced aircraft material. The few resources...

I was looking at building a fpv plane. I was wondering if anyone could help me with the basic equations i would need for motor sizing etc. Just how I would go about finding power required. Looking at about a loaded weight of about 5kg wingspan 2.5-3m. Not sure of speed maybe around 40-70kph.

i have planned to make a human powered aircraft.For that i want to know about the problems on making that.

I am a bit confused about pressures in and around an aircraft. Inside the cabin we have a static pressure, since we assume the air is standing still. (I know it's not, due to the Environmental Control system, but let's ignore that). Outide the aircraft we have the static pressure = p ambient...

Now a days i am working on this paper...

Mildly futuristic setting concerning technology, sparsely populated exoplanet with 3 atm. I'm looking for a cool, but very practical plane design. A photo of design that I thought about (from wikipedia) : (except that I think about a bit smaller ones) It looks as if such design had two...

Hello there, I was just wondering why aircraft tires are not spun up to landing speed before touching down, wouldn't this allow them to be used for much longer before they need to get retreaded? This would also cut down on the cleaning that happens on runways to remove the rubber right?

Some passenger aircraft have fuel in their wings. How they manage to reduce fuel splashes inside wing when aircraft tilt left or right for turning. The immediate guess in my mind is multiple baffles to reduce fuel excessive movement. Am I right? Can someone explain or give some link where I can...

Homework Statement [/B] Keep in mind this is a Top Gun-themed homework assignment. Cougar comes in for a shaky landing. His 20422 kg airplane traveling at 85 m/s strikes the deck at 3.5 degrees below the horizontal. Cougar's plane snags the landing cable stretched across the deck. The landing...

I've read that the total forward force on an engine is given by a change of momentum which is written as ##P = \mu_{fuel}v_{0} + \mu_{air}(v_{0}-v) ##, where ##\mu_{fuel}##, ##\mu_{air}##, ##v_{0}## and ##v## are respectively the rate of decrease of mass of the fuel being burnt, the rate which...

Burt Rutan is at it again with a new plane the SkiGull - "Its docking system is two, 5” diameter electric motors each driving a 27” diameter folding prop. These self-contained units (Off-the-shelf motor, controller, batteries used for giant RC models) mount on each wing. They provide forward...

I'm reading about propellers and trying to get some of the basics, and some things are confusing to me. Namely, a quadcopter has a 12x6 prop, with a 6-pitch. That means in every rotation it should move 6 inches forward(up), but it doesn't do that at all since it's in hover mode. Wouldn't that...

Good day Geniuses. im building a drone prototype for an agricultural project. approx. weight will be 600 lbs, using my own 8 rotor design. trying to determine rotor size and motor power required to fly such a device at 30 feet. would also be interested to determine an approximate wind speed...

It has been some time since I sat through basic aircraft dynamics, so I hope to check some conclusions about the topic. Clearly rockets and missiles have maintained stable flight via gimble of the engines. My understanding has been that designing, say, jet aircraft in this way (i.e. forgoing...

Anyone know any good resources on airplane tails? I am looking for a tail shape that will work at low reynolds numbers for a small (model sized) cargo plane. I found quite a lot on wings when I was looking for a shape for that but not so much for tails. If anyone knows any good books that...

I am looking for a book that teaches how to design an RC aircraft, given performance specifications: $$v_{stall}, v_{max}, m_{payload}, h_{max}$$ That is, given the stall speed, max. speed, payload and service ceiling, I'd like to know how to design the aircraft's air-frame (wing span...