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Most importantly, the maximum lift-to-drag ratio is independent of the weight of the aircraft, the area of the wing, or the wing loading. It can be shown that two main drivers of maximum lift-to-drag ratio for a fixed wing aircraft are wingspan and total wetted area. One method for estimating the zero-lift drag coefficient of an aircraft is the ...
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.
The lift-to-drag ratio, or L/D ratio, is the amount of lift generated by a wing or vehicle, divided by the drag it creates by moving through the air. A higher or more favourable L/D ratio is typically one of the major goals in aircraft design; since a particular aircraft's needed lift is set by its weight, delivering that lift with lower drag ...
The natural outcome of this requirement is a wing design that is thin and wide, which has a low thickness-to-chord ratio. At lower speeds, undesirable parasitic drag is largely a function of the total surface area , which suggests using a wing with minimum chord, leading to the high aspect ratios seen on light aircraft and regional airliners .
Aircraft with thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1:1 can pitch straight up and maintain airspeed until performance decreases at higher altitude. [3] A plane can take off even if the thrust is less than its weight as, unlike a rocket, the lifting force is produced by lift from the wings, not directly by thrust from the engine.
An ASH 31 glider with very high aspect ratio (AR=33.5) and lift-to-drag ratio (L/D=56) In aeronautics, the aspect ratio of a wing is the ratio of its span to its mean chord. It is equal to the square of the wingspan divided by the wing area. Thus, a long, narrow wing has a high aspect ratio, whereas a short, wide wing has a low aspect ratio. [1]
It is also useful to show the relationship between section lift coefficient and drag coefficient. The section lift coefficient is based on two-dimensional flow over a wing of infinite span and non-varying cross-section so the lift is independent of spanwise effects and is defined in terms of ′, the lift force per unit span of the wing. The ...
Drag and lift coefficients for the NACA 63 3 618 airfoil. Full curves are lift, dashed drag; red curves have R e = 3·10 6, blue 9·10 6. Coefficients of lift and drag against angle of attack. Curve showing induced drag, parasitic drag and total drag as a function of airspeed. Drag curve for the NACA 63 3 618 airfoil, colour-coded as opposite plot.