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A fixed-wing aircraft increases or decreases the lift generated by the wings when it pitches nose up or down by increasing or decreasing the angle of attack (AOA). The roll angle is also known as bank angle on a fixed-wing aircraft, which usually "banks" to change the horizontal direction of flight.
Mean aerodynamic chord (MAC) is defined as: [6] = (), where y is the coordinate along the wing span and c is the chord at the coordinate y.Other terms are as for SMC. The MAC is a two-dimensional representation of the whole wing. The pressure distribution over the entire wing can be reduced to a single lift force
The NACA four-digit wing sections define the profile by: [2] First digit describing maximum camber as percentage of the chord. Second digit describing the distance of maximum camber from the airfoil leading edge in tenths of the chord. Last two digits describing maximum thickness of the airfoil as percent of the chord. [3]
If a disturbance causes an aircraft to roll away from its normal wings-level position as in Figure 1, the aircraft will begin to move somewhat sideways toward the lower wing. [3] In Figure 2, the airplane's flight path has started to move toward its left while the nose of the airplane is still pointing in the original direction.
A fixed-wing aircraft may have more than one wing plane, stacked one above another: Biplane: two wing planes of similar size, stacked one above the other. The biplane is inherently lighter and stronger than a monoplane and was the most common configuration until the 1930s. The very first Wright Flyer I was a biplane.
Development of an effective set of flight control surfaces was a critical advance in the development of aircraft. Early efforts at fixed-wing aircraft design succeeded in generating sufficient lift to get the aircraft off the ground, but once aloft, the aircraft proved uncontrollable, often with disastrous results. The development of effective ...
The aerodynamic center is shown, labeled "c.a." In aerodynamics , the torques or moments acting on an airfoil moving through a fluid can be accounted for by the net lift and net drag applied at some point on the airfoil, and a separate net pitching moment about that point whose magnitude varies with the choice of where the lift is chosen to be ...
The wing is designed so that the angle of incidence is greater at the wing roots and decreases across the span, becoming lowest at the wing tip. This is usually to ensure that at stall speed the wing root stalls before the wing tips , providing the aircraft with continued aileron control and some resistance to spinning .