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Learning Aeronautical Engineering From Historic Aircraft Designs

Vintage Aviation News

Particularly in battle aerodynamics, drag reduction, and structural durability, early aircraft teach engineers today important insights. Setting the benchmark for modern airliners, the Douglas DC-3 (1935) a classic in commercial aviation brought all-metal construction, retractable landing gear, and more efficient airfoil designs.

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Flight Test Files: The Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket – Chasing Mach 2

Vintage Aviation News

They flew a total of 313 missions, collecting invaluable data on pitch stability, lift, drag, and buffeting in transonic and supersonic flight. The jet- and rocket-powered aircraft exceeded expectations, performing better than predicted in high-speed wind tunnel testsparticularly in drag performance above Mach 0.85.

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Wingtip Vortices and Wake Turbulence

Pilot Institute

When air flows over the aircraft wing, the shape of the airfoil creates low pressure above the wing and relatively higher pressure below the wing. This horizontal component of lift is called Induced Drag. Its called induced drag since it only exists as a consequence of lift. Increased Drag Moving air around is hard work!

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Today in Aviation History: First Flight of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Vintage Aviation News

Davis, who had developed a new wing, whose airfoil had a lower drag co-efficiency than other wing designs of the time, and which had already been used on the company’s Model 31/XP4Y Corregidor flying boat. The company had hired a freelance aeronautical engineer, David R.

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Quiz: Basic Aircraft Aerodynamics

Flight Training Central

The term 'angle of attack' is defined as the angle between the airplane's longitudinal axis and that of the air striking the airfoil. Air traveling faster over the curved upper surface of an airfoil causes lower pressure on the top surface. The four forces acting on an airplane in flight are lift, weight, thrust, and drag.

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What Is Bernoulli’s Principle? A Simple Guide for Pilots

Pilot Institute

Airfoils use this principle, with faster airflow over the top creating lower pressure. If lift were entirely due to Bernoulli, a symmetric airfoil (one with equal curvature on top and bottom) wouldnt generate lift – yet it does when given the right angle of attack. In reality, the wing also uses Newtons third law to create lift.

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Nemesis NXT

Plane and Pilot

The NXT was designed using computer-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD), NASA-derived airfoils, and was tested in the Lockheed wind tunnel to refine the aerodynamics. However, like any overnight success story, the actual journey to the NXT began in the early 1990s with the original Nemesis.

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