A few basis of knowledge

 Good afternoon my aeronautics enthusiasts!

In today’s blog we will be covering some fundamentals aspects of the airplanes for understanding how they work. Without more delay here we start.

As you all know airplanes are big metals machines that fly and they can carry passengers but also many kinds of cargo, from bags to vehicles, animals or even parts of other planes. There are as many planes as you can imagine and all of them have different shapes, others are bigger, and their uses are unlimited. Regardless all of them are different they all work in the same way, so how do they work?

To start will be talking about the fuselage or also know as the body of the airplane. This part is the one which holds all the parts of the plane and carry all the passengers in the upper floor and in the lower floor we can find all the cargo holds. In bigger planes you can even find two floors for only carrying passengers such as the Queen of the skies (The Boeing 747) and the SuperJumbo the Airbus A380. In addition, as I was mentioning before, the fuselage holds all the other parts of the plane and we will be covering all of them such as the wings, the tail and the landing gear. I almost forgot to mention that in the fuselage we can find the cockpit where the captain and the first officer have full control of the plane, a particularly important part of the plane!

Secondly, we will be covering the wings where the magic of lift occurs. The wings are awfully long surfaces that end in point with a winglet that is used to reduce the drag and produce less vortices. The lift occurs all along the bottom surface of the wing, this happens when the air enters from the front of the wing to the rear at extremely high speed. As the air needs to go faster on the bottom due to the shape of the wing this increase air speed but reduce pressure and as on the lower part of the wing there’s more pressure this presses the airplane upwards. Thanks to these differences of pressure when the air goes through the wing, the plane can climb and gain some altitude but it also needs the help of the horizontal stabilizer, don’t worry you will understand it in a second. That is what my dear friends we call lift. 

The wings have some other parts like:

• Flaps and slats: These are expendables surfaces that are used to increase the surface of the wing. The slats are situated at front of the wing, also called leading edge, and the flaps are at the rear or trailing edge. The possibility of increasing the surface increases the lift produced on the wings and the possibility to operate the plane with lower speed. However even if we are producing high lift we also produce drag which is the resistance that produce the plane to the movement. That’s is the reason why when landing and taking off the plane needs to extend flaps and slats because when flying at low speed the wing by is own doesn’t have the amount lift necessary to make the plane flyable. 

• Spoilers: These are plates that are situated on the bottom of the surface of the plane. They are used to slow down the plane by moving the airflow of the wing upwards. This creates a big force towards, and it is usually used when flying to decrease a bit the speed and fully deployed on landings to help stopping the plane.

• Ailerons: The ailerons are the outboard hinged part of the wing. These surfaces are used for rolling the plane across the main axis of the plane. As there’s one in each wing, they work in the opposite direction each one. When one goes up the other one goes down. When one is up produces drag and deflects he airflow upward in that wing while the other one is down deflecting the airflow towards and producing roll in one direction. For example: if the right aileron is up and the left is down, the airspeed on the right decrease and on the left increase so that makes the airplane to roll to the right. However, be careful, if you maintain the ailerons too much in this position the plane could do a barrel roll also known as a 360º roll and we don’t want that to happen in a commercial plane!

• Engines: As all the other parts of the wing which are essentials, the engines are not less. The engines are the ones that gives the thrust to plane, this means that they produce force to the rear of the plane. According to the third law of newton all forces have an equal and opposite force, so when the engine suck air and throw it at the rear this produces a force to the front which is called the thrust. In commercial planes are commonly used turbofans that suck a lot of air and throw it at an extremely high speed at the rear. In combat planes we can find what we call turbojet engine and on smaller planes the turbopropeller. All of them have different mechanisms but they function in the same way, move big masses of air in the opposite direction of movement producing thrust.

For concluding this blog, we will be covering the last part attached to the fuselage. This part is located at the rear and it is called the tail. The tail is composed by two perpendiculars parts, the horizontal and vertical stabilizer.

• The horizontal stabilizer as its name says it is a stabilizer horizontal relative to the ground. It is almost like having two smaller wings at the rear of the plane. In the horizontal stabilizer we found the elevator and it works almost like the ailerons. There is one in each side of the stabilizer and they work as movable surfaces that moves direction of the air passing through. The unique difference is that they work in the same direction. In this way we can control the direction of the plane by rotating the nose upwards or towards. 

For example, when the pilot put both elevators down, the nose of the plane pitch down and that means that the tail will be higher than the nose. Pitching is the movement that occurs through the centre of gravity of the plane and his axis is horizontal and perpendicular respect to the fuselage. If in our example our pilot maintains the nose down the plane will dive reducing the altitude and finally crashing to the surface. In contraposition if the elevator is up, the plane will climb and start gaining altitude however if the elevator still up for a long time the plane could do what we call a loop. A looping will be doing a full circumference of 360º and from the cockpit view you will be seeing the ground and as you pitch up you will starting to see the sky. For a moment you will be inverted and then starting to see again the ground but the opposite side you where flying and finally returning in your original flying direction. It's sounds quite difficult to explain but at the end of the blog you will see a full looping of an Airbus A400M so don't miss it!

• The vertical stabilizer is perpendicular to the horizontal stabilizer and it is like having a wing on the rear top of the plane. The maximum height of the plane is usually is the distance from the top of the vertical stabilizer and the ground. I can assure you that is a remarkably high distance even in small commercial planes, so if you are frightened of height it won’t be easy for you to repair something in the stabilizer.

In this stabilizer we find the rudder and it’s mechanism is the same as the ailerons and the elevators. It’s a big surface that depending on the side is moving it moves the airflow in that direction and produces the yaw of the plane. The yaw is the movement across the vertical and perpendicular axis of the fuselage and permits the plane to move the nose to the left or the right.

For example, if the pilot moves the rudder to the left all the airflow goes to the left and this presses the tail to the right resulting in a left movement of the nose.

After this little presentation and hoping you understood everything I will like to ask you a question which the next one: What motion will occur in an airplane with the elevator deflected up and the rudder deflected to the right?

No clue about it? I don’t think so! If you answered that the plane will pitch up and turn right, you are god damn right! But what would happen if we maintain the rudder right and elevator up during a long time? We will start doing loopings heading right like crazy pilots!!

Hope you learn a lot of new extraordinary things, see you on next week!