There are four forces that act on an
aircraft in flight: lift, weight, thrust, and drag. From Newton's
first law of motion we know that an object
at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion (constant
velocity) will stay in motion unless acted on by an external force.
If there is no net external force, the object will maintain a constant
velocity.
In an ideal situation, the forces acting on an aircraft in flight can
produce no net external force.
In this situation the lift
is equal to the weight, and the thrust
is equal to the drag. The closest example of
this condition is a cruising airliner. While the weight
decreases due to fuel burned, the change is very small relative to
the total aircraft weight. The aircraft maintains a constant airspeed
called the cruise velocity.
If we take into account the relative
velocity of the wind, we can determine the ground speed of a
cruising aircraft.
The ground speed is equal to the airspeed plus the wind speed using
vector addition.
The
motion
of the aircraft is a pure
translation.
With a constant ground speed it is relatively easy
to determine the aircraft range, the
distance the airplane can fly with a given load of fuel.
If the pilot changes the throttle setting, or increases the wing
angle of attack, the forces become
unbalanced. The aircraft will move in the direction of the
greater force, and we can compute acceleration of the aircraft from
Newton's second law of motion.
Activities:
Guided Tours
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Cruising Aircraft:
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