A little bit of engineering (Несколько текстов для зачёта), страница 17

A fourth force acting on all airplanes is drag. Drag is created because any object moving through a fluid, such as an airplane through air, produces friction as it interacts with that fluid and because it must move the fluid out of its way to do its work. A high-lift wing surface, for example, may create a great deal of lift for an airplane, but because of its large size, it is also creating a significant amount of drag. That is why high-speed fighters and missiles have such thin wings—they need to minimize drag created by lift. Conversely, a crop duster, which flies at relatively slow speeds, may have a big, thick wing because high lift is more important than the amount of drag associated with it. Drag is also minimized by designing sleek, aerodynamic airplanes, with shapes that slip easily through the air.

Managing the balance between these four forces is the challenge of flight. When thrust is greater than drag, an airplane will accelerate. When lift is greater than weight, it will climb. Using various control surfaces and propulsion systems, a pilot can manipulate the balance of the four forces to change the direction or speed. A pilot can reduce thrust in order to slow down or descend. The pilot can lower the landing gear into the airstream and deploy the landing flaps on the wings to increase drag, which has the same effect as reducing thrust. The pilot can add thrust either to speed up or climb. Or, by retracting the landing gear and flaps, and thereby reducing drag, the pilot can accelerate or climb.

In addition to balancing lift, weight, thrust, and drag, modern airplanes have to contend with another phenomenon. The sound barrier is not a physical barrier but a speed at which the behavior of the airflow around an airplane changes dramatically. Fighter pilots in World War II (1939-1945) first ran up against this so-called barrier in high-speed dives during air combat. In some cases, pilots lost control of the aircraft as shock waves built up on control surfaces, effectively locking the controls and leaving the crews helpless. After World War II, designers tackled the realm of supersonic flight, primarily for military airplanes, but with commercial applications as well.

Supersonic flight is defined as flight at a speed greater than that of the local speed of sound. At sea level, sound travels through air at approximately 1,220 km/h (760 mph). At the speed of sound, a shock wave consisting of highly compressed air forms at the nose of the plane. This shock wave moves back at a sharp angle as the speed increases.

Supersonic flight was achieved in 1947 for the first time by the Bell X-1 rocket plane, flown by Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager. Speeds at or near supersonic flight are measured in units called Mach numbers, which represent the ratio of the speed of the airplane to the speed of sound as it moves air. An airplane traveling at less than Mach 1 is traveling below the speed of sound (subsonic); at Mach 1, an airplane is traveling at the speed of sound (transonic); at Mach 2, an airplane is traveling at twice the speed of sound (supersonic flight). Speeds of Mach 1 to 5 are referred to as supersonic; speeds of Mach 5 and above are called hypersonic. Designers in Europe and the United States developed succeeding generations of military aircraft, culminating in the 1960s and 1970s with Mach 3+ speedsters such as the Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor, the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, and the SR-71 spy plane.

The shock wave created by an airplane moving at supersonic and hypersonic speeds represents a rather abrupt change in air pressure and is perceived on the ground as a sonic boom, the exact nature of which varies depending upon how far away the aircraft is and the distance of the observer from the flight path. Sonic booms at low altitudes over populated areas are generally considered a significant problem and have prevented most supersonic airplanes from efficiently utilizing overland routes. For example, the Anglo-French Concorde, a commercial supersonic aircraft, is generally limited to over-water routes, or to those over sparsely populated regions of the world. Designers today believe they can help lessen the impact of sonic booms created by supersonic airliners but probably cannot eliminate them.

One of the most difficult practical barriers to supersonic flight is the fact that high-speed flight produces heat through friction. At such high speeds, enormous temperatures are reached at the surface of the craft. In fact, today’s Concorde must fly a flight profile dictated by temperature requirements; if the aircraft moves too fast, then the temperature rises above safe limits for the aluminum structure of the airplane. Titanium and other relatively exotic, and expensive, metals are more heat-resistant, but harder to manufacture and maintain. Airplane designers have concluded that a speed of Mach 2.7 is about the limit for conventional, relatively inexpensive materials and fuels. Above that speed, an airplane would need to be constructed of more temperature-resistant materials, and would most likely have to find a way to cool its fuel.

Airplanes generally share the same basic configuration—each usually has a fuselage, wings, tail, landing gear, and a set of specialized control surfaces mounted on the wings and tail.

The fuselage is the main cabin, or body of the airplane. Generally the fuselage has a cockpit section at the front end, where the pilot controls the airplane, and a cabin section. The cabin section may be designed to carry passengers, cargo, or both. In a military fighter plane, the fuselage may house the engines, fuel, electronics, and some weapons. In some of the sleekest of gliders and ultralight airplanes, the fuselage may be nothing more than a minimal structure connecting the wings, tail, cockpit, and engines.

All airplanes, by definition, have wings. Some are nearly all wing with a very small cockpit. Others have minimal wings, or wings that seem to be merely extensions of a blended, aerodynamic fuselage, such as the space shuttle.

Before the 20th century, wings were made of wooden ribs and spars (or beams), covered with fabric that was sewn tightly and varnished to be extremely stiff. A conventional wing has one or more spars that run from one end of the wing to the other. Perpendicular to the spar are a series of ribs, which run from the front, or leading edge, to the rear, or trailing edge, of the wing. These are carefully constructed to shape the wing in a manner that determines its lifting properties. Wood and fabric wings often used spruce for the structure, because of that material’s relatively light weight and high strength, and linen for the cloth covering.

Early airplanes were usually biplanes—craft with two wings, usually one mounted about 1.5 m (about 5 to 6 ft) above the other. Aircraft pioneers found they could build such wings relatively easily and brace them together using wires to connect the upper and lower wing to create a strong structure with substantial lift. In pushing the many cables, wood, and fabric through the air, these designs created a great deal of drag, so aircraft engineers eventually pursued the monoplane, or single-wing airplane. A monoplane’s single wing gives it great advantages in speed, simplicity, and visibility for the pilot.

After World War I (1914-1918), designers began moving toward wings made of steel and aluminum, and, combined with new construction techniques, these materials enabled the development of modern all-metal wings capable not only of developing lift but of housing landing gear, weapons, and fuel.

Over the years, many airplane designers have postulated that the ideal airplane would, in fact, be nothing but wing. Flying wings, as they are called, were first developed in the 1930s and 1940s. American aerospace manufacturer Northrop Grumman Corporation’s flying wing, the B-2 bomber, or stealth bomber, developed in the 1980s, has been a great success as a flying machine, benefiting from modern computer-aided design (CAD), advanced materials, and computerized flight controls. Popular magazines routinely show artists’ concepts of flying-wing airliners, but airline and airport managers have been unable to integrate these unusual shapes into conventional airline and airport facilities.

Most airplanes, except for flying wings, have a tail assembly attached to the rear of the fuselage, consisting of vertical and horizontal stabilizers, which look like small wings; a rudder; and elevators. The components of the tail assembly are collectively referred to as the empennage.

The stabilizers serve to help keep the airplane stable while in flight. The rudder is at the trailing edge of the vertical stabilizer and is used by the airplane to help control turns. An airplane actually turns by banking, or moving, its wings laterally, but the rudder helps keep the turn coordinated by serving much like a boat’s rudder to move the nose of the airplane left or right. Moving an airplane’s nose left or right is known as a yaw motion. Rudder motion is usually controlled by two pedals on the floor of the cockpit, which are pushed by the pilot.

Elevators are control surfaces at the trailing edge of horizontal stabilizers. The elevators control the up-and-down motion, or pitch, of the airplane’s nose. Moving the elevators up into the airstream will cause the tail to go down and the nose to pitch up. A pilot controls pitch by moving a control column or stick.

All airplanes must have some type of landing gear. Modern aircraft employ brakes, wheels, and tires designed specifically for the demands of flight. Tires must be capable of going from a standstill to nearly 322 km/h (200 mph) at landing, as well as carrying nearly 454 metric tons. Brakes, often incorporating special heat-resistant materials, must be able to handle emergencies, such as a 400-metric-ton airliner aborting a takeoff at the last possible moment. Antiskid braking systems, common on automobiles today, were originally developed for aircraft and are used to gain maximum possible braking power on wet or icy runways.

Larger and more-complex aircraft typically have retractable landing gear—so called because they can be pulled up into the wing or fuselage after takeoff. Having retractable gear greatly reduces the drag generated by the wheel structures that would otherwise hang out in the airstream.

An airplane is capable of three types of motion that revolve around three separate axes. The plane may fly steadily in one direction and at one altitude—or it may turn, climb, or descend. An airplane may roll, banking its wings either left or right, about the longitudinal axis, which runs the length of the craft. The airplane may yaw its nose either left or right about the vertical axis, which runs straight down through the middle of the airplane. Finally, a plane may pitch its nose up or down, moving about its lateral axis, which may be thought of as a straight line running from wingtip to wingtip.

An airplane relies on the movement of air across its wings for lift, and it makes use of this same airflow to move in any way about the three axes. To do so, the pilot will manipulate controls in the cockpit that direct control surfaces on the wings and tail to move into the airstream. The airplane will yaw, pitch, or roll, depending on which control surfaces or combination of surfaces are moved, or deflected, by the pilot.

In order to bank and begin a turn, a conventional airplane will deflect control surfaces on the trailing edge of the wings known as ailerons. In order to bank left, the left aileron is lifted up into the airstream over the left wing, creating a small amount of drag and decreasing the lift produced by that wing. At the same time, the right aileron is pushed down into the airstream, thereby increasing slightly the lift produced by the right wing. The right wing then comes up, the left wing goes down, and the airplane banks to the left. To bank to the right, the ailerons are moved in exactly the opposite fashion.

In order to yaw, or turn the airplane’s nose left or right, the pilot must press upon rudder pedals on the floor of the cockpit. Push down on the left pedal, and the rudder at the trailing edge of the vertical stabilizer moves to the left. As in a boat, the left rudder moves the nose of the plane to the left. A push on the right pedal causes the airplane to yaw to the right.

In order to pitch the nose up or down, the pilot usually pulls or pushes on a control wheel or stick, thereby moving the elevators at the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer. Pulling back on the wheel deflects the elevators upward into the airstream, pushing the tail down and the nose up. Pushing forward on the wheel causes the elevators to drop down, lifting the tail and forcing the nose down.

Airplanes that are more complex also have a set of secondary control surfaces that may include devices such as flaps, slats, trim tabs, spoilers, and speed brakes. Flaps and slats are generally used during takeoff and landing to increase the amount of lift produced by the wing at low speeds. Flaps usually droop down from the trailing edge of the wing, although some jets have leading-edge flaps as well. On some airplanes, they also can be extended back beyond the normal trailing edge of the wing to increase the surface area of the wing as well as change its shape. Leading-edge slats usually extend from the front of the wing at low speeds to change the way the air flows over the wing, thereby increasing lift. Flaps also often serve to increase drag and slow the approach of a landing airplane.