The Science of Flight

Wednesday 13th February 2008

Laurie Winkless
National Physical Laboratory

[email protected]
Tuesday, December 7, 2021

A little bit about me…..

• I work at NPL in the Nanomaterials group

• My background is in Space Science

– I hold a BSc in Physics and Astrophysics
– I also hold an MSc in Spacecraft Technology

• I was a scholarship student at the Kennedy

Space Centre, Florida for six months

• I LOVE anything to do with flight – from

airliners to space shuttles!

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Flying Objects……

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But Mother Nature got there first…..

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So what allows these objects to fly ?

Flight is made possible by four fundamental forces:
Weight - A result of gravity,
it pulls everything toward
the ground.
Lift - Caused by air moving
around the wings, it acts
upward, opposing weight.
Drag - Caused by friction, it
acts in the opposite direction
to motion.
Thrust - produced by an
engine, overcomes the force
of drag.
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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

These four forces act in combination to make flight

possible. If these forces are balanced, the aircraft
moves forward at constant speed

If the plane is moving forward,

it means that thrust has a
bigger influence than drag.

If the plane is climbing, the

force of lift is greater than the
force of weight.

If the plane is descending All these things apply to birds too 

(hopefully near an airport!),
weight is greater than lift.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Flight, Air Pressure and a Mathematician

• Lift is an important force in flight dynamics
– Air moving over the wings of a bird or an aircraft causes lift,
which lets them fly……. But HOW does it work ?

• A man named Daniel Bernoulli (pronounced Ber-noo-lee)

discovered lift. Lift is all to do with something called Air Pressure.

Air is a type of gas. It has weight and has molecules which

are constantly moving. Air has pressure - it's always
pushing against things. Air pressure is created by the
molecules moving around and bumping into each
other…..and anything else in the way 

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

In 1738, Bernoulli found that the faster a gas (like air)

moves, the less pressure it exerts

How and why does this work, and what does it have to do
with aircraft in flight?

• When air flow is disturbed - when a wing moves through

it, for example - Air divides and flows around the wing
• Aircraft and bird’s wings are a very special shape, called
an airfoil. The shape of the airfoil affects the way air
moves around it.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

• Aircraft and bird’s wings are airfoil-shaped….

what does this look like?
The top surface of an airfoil
(or wing) is curved - air
travelling over it has farther
to travel to reach the back
of the wing.

To travel across the wing

in the same amount of
time, air moving across the
top of the wing has to go
faster.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Because it's moving faster, the air on top of the

wing exerts less pressure on the wing than the air
below the wing
In other words, air below the
wing pushes up more
than air above the wing
pushes down.

This difference in pressure

results in an upward force
called lift. And presto, lift
gets things flying.

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Now its your turn to build an

airplane 

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But what KEEPS things flying?

Sir Isaac Newton proposed three laws of motion in 1665.

These Laws of Motion help to explain how a planes
flies.
- If an object is not moving, it will not start moving by
itself. If an object is moving, it will not stop or change
direction unless something pushes it.
- Objects will move farther and faster when they are
pushed harder.
- When an object is pushed in one direction, there is
always a resistance of the same size in the opposite
direction.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

How does weight affect flight?

Aircraft are heavy. How do they stay in the air?!
- An airplane’s weight is pulled downward toward
earth. To beat this downward pull, aircraft are
very carefully designed
- By choosing where the ‘heavy’ bits of an aircraft
are placed, designers can balance the plane to
make it more controllable for the pilot. This is why
baggage limits exist!

• When weight (gravity) is greater than lift, the airplane sinks

(descends).
• When lift is greater than weight, the airplane climbs (ascends).
• When the two forces are balanced, the airplane's flight path is steady
and level.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Let's pretend that our arms are wings. If we place one

wing down and one wing up we can use the roll to
change the direction of the plane. We are helping to
turn the plane by yawing toward one side.

A pilot of a plane has special controls that can be used

to fly the plane. The ailerons, elevators and
rudders are just three of them.

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To roll the plane to the right or left, the ailerons are

raised on one wing and lowered on the other. The
wing with the lowered aileron rises while the wing
with the raised aileron drops.

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Pitch is to make a plane descend or climb. The

pilot adjusts the elevators on the tail to make a
plane descend or climb. Lowering the elevators
caused the airplane's nose to drop, sending the
plane downward. Raising the elevators causes
the airplane to climb.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Yaw is the turning of a plane. When the rudder is

turned to one side, the airplane moves left or right.
The airplane's nose is pointed in the same direction
as the direction of the rudder. The rudder and the
ailerons are used together to make a turn.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

So that’s one form of flight…..

We’ve talked about birds and airplanes…. basically
things that fly with one wing on tow opposite
sides of a body. What other kind of flying objects
can you think of?

Helicopters

Rockets

UFOs

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Helicopters and Rotary Flight

The lifting force in helicopters is produced by the rotors. As they spin they
cut into the air and produce lift. Each blade produces an equal share of
the lifting force.

Spinning the rotor against the air causes lift, allowing the helicopter to rise
vertically or hover. Tilting the spinning rotor will cause flight in the direction of
the tilt.

What about the engine?

The engine(s) simply drive the rotors and did not assist directly with
forward flight (like they would with a plane).
There is a very small amount of thrust that comes from engine exhaust,
but it is so small that it does not effect flight performance

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

The Tail Rotor is very important. If you spin a rotor using an engine,
the rotor will rotate, but the engine and the helicopter will try to rotate
in the opposite direction. The tail rotor is connected to the main rotor
through a gearbox.

This is called TORQUE REACTION

The tail rotor is used like a small propeller,
to pull against torque reaction and hold the
helicopter straight.

By applying more or less pitch (angle) to the tail rotor blades it can
be used to make the helicopter turn left or right, becoming a rudder.

Using the tail rotor too much results is an excess of force in the
‘torque’ direction which will tend to make the helicopter drift
sideways.

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Now its your turn to build a

helicopter 

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Rocket Science!
Rockets fly differently to aircraft, they use a chemical
reaction to ‘get going’…. Rocket engines are reaction
engines.
Rocket’s use Newton’s famous principle to work - “To
every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
A rocket engine ejects mass (burning fuel) in one
direction and can move forward from the reaction that
occurs in the opposite direction as a result.

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• Different fuels are put inside a rocket’s

tank to mix with each other. The fuel
tank has a hole (or nozzle) in the
bottom.
• When the fuels mix, they explode and
the explosion pushes against the
insides of the tank.
• Because of the hole, the burning fuel
can escape from the bottom of the tank.
• Because the fuel cannot escape from
any other point, there is a huge amount
of force pushing against the top end of
the tank - the rocket reacts by moving
in that direction.

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• Rocket fuels can be liquid or solid in form

– Solid: Ammonium Perchlorate and Aluminium Powder
– Liquid: liquid oxygen, nitrogen tetroxide, and hydrogen
peroxide

In the case of the Space

Shuttle, both solid and
liquid are used!

Liquid Fuel Tank

Solid Fuel Boosters

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Unfortunately you cant build a

rocket today…… 

But have a look here for the NPL

water rockets competition:
www.npl.co.uk

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Thanks for listening



[email protected]
www.npl.co.uk

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