HOW AEROPLANES FLY

Right from my childhood, i have been wondering how such a giant massive structure like aeroplane fly in the sky but a human can't. It took me 15 years to understand that we humans are not aerodynamically designed to fly.

Now i will be discussing about how big massive aeroplanes fly. For that we need a little knowledge about balancing of forces as we have studied in our school.

FORCES ACTING ON AN AEROPLANE

For an aeroplane to make a stable flight in the air it must balance the forces mentioned above.

WEIGHT 

It is the weight or the gravity that is trying to pull the body towards the earth. 

LIFT

It is the counter balancing force for weight that is acting upward which is used to lift the body into the air. It acts in the opposite direction of weight.

THRUST

It is a force that is responsible for forward movement of the plane. 

DRAG

It is relatively opposing force to the thrust just like the friction.

HOW LIFT IS PRODUCED??

If you observe the cross section of the wing, then it actually looks like this. It is not perfectly flat but a curved surface.

It is called an AIRFOIL. This structure is actually very crucial in the stable flight of the plane. It actually generate the lift required for the flight and can also control the movement of the plane. We can even observe this in our car spoilers and even our fan wings.

So the lift is produced by a principle called MAGNUS EFFECT. 

It states that when a fluid is made to contact a curved surface then it actually tries to stay close to the surface.

This is what happens when our plane is moving in the air. The air comes in contact with the airfoil structure and creates a high pressure on the lower surface and a low pressure area on the upward surface. When the plane reaches the required speed then the surface with high pressure actually lifts the surface up into the air.

This is the basic mechanism involved in the lift of the plane

HOW PLANE MOVES FORWARD

As i have explained before that the thrust is responsible for the forward movement of the plane. The Jet engines are actually installed on the bottom side of the wings. These engines are responsible in producing thrust required for the plane to cruise forward.

So this is the basic mechanism involved in the flight of the planes.

The plane does contains Elevators, Rudders, Ailerons to control the movement of the plane.

Hope you gained some knowledge from this post

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