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Wing loading is a useful measure of the stalling speed of an aircraft. Wings generate lift owing to the motion of air around the wing. Larger wings move more air, so an aircraft with a large wing area relative to its mass (i.e., low wing loading) will have a lower stalling speed.
|wing loading= – the loaded weight of the aircraft divided by the area of the wing. |disk loading= – the loaded weight of the aircraft divided by the area of the rotor. |fuel consumption= – fuel burn (kg/km or lb/mi). |avionics= – a place to put any specific avionics used. |power/mass= – the power to weight ratio
The most common high-lift device is the flap, a movable portion of the wing that can be lowered to produce extra lift. When a flap is lowered this re-shapes the wing section to give it more camber. Flaps are usually located on the trailing edge of a wing, while leading edge flaps are used occasionally. There are many kinds of trailing-edge flap.
All fixed-wing aircraft have a minimum speed at which they can maintain level flight, the stall speed (left limit line in the diagram). As the aircraft gains altitude the stall speed increases; since the wing is not growing any larger the only way to support the aircraft's weight with less air is to increase speed.
The distribution of forces on a wing in flight are both complex and varying. This image shows the forces for two typical airfoils, a symmetrical design on the left, and an asymmetrical design more typical of low-speed designs on the right. This diagram shows only the lift components; the similar drag considerations are not illustrated.
The Spitfire wing may be classified as: "a conventional low-wing cantilever monoplane with unswept elliptical wings of moderate aspect ratio and slight dihedral".. The wing configuration or planform of a fixed-wing aircraft (including both gliders and powered aeroplanes) is its arrangement of lifting and related surfaces.
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The horseshoe vortex model is a simplified representation of the vortex system present in the flow of air around a wing. This vortex system is modelled by the bound vortex (bound to the wing) and two trailing vortices, therefore having a shape vaguely reminiscent of a horseshoe.