Airplane

F

Instruments

Airplane pilots rely on a set of instruments in the cockpit to monitor airplane systems, to control the flight of the aircraft, and to navigate. By the end of the 20th century traditional instrument displays using analog dials and indicators began to be replaced with computer-controlled electronic displays in new designs of aircraft.

Systems instruments will tell a pilot about the condition of the airplane’s engines and electrical, hydraulic, and fuel systems. Piston-engine instruments monitor engine and exhaust-gas temperatures, and oil pressures and temperatures. Jet-engine instruments measure the rotational speeds of the rotating blades in the turbines, as well as gas temperatures and fuel flow.

Flight instruments are those used to tell a pilot the course, speed, altitude, and attitude of the airplane. They may include an airspeed indicator, an artificial horizon, an altimeter, and a compass. These instruments have many variations, depending on the complexity and performance of the airplane. For example, high-speed jet aircraft have airspeed indicators that may indicate speeds both in nautical miles per hour (slightly faster than miles per hour used with ground vehicles) and in Mach number. The artificial horizon indicates whether the airplane is banking, climbing, or diving, in relation to the Earth. An airplane with its nose up may or may not be climbing, depending on its airspeed and momentum.

General-aviation (private aircraft), military, and commercial airplanes also have instruments that aid in navigation. The compass is the simplest of these, but many airplanes now employ satellite navigation systems and computers to navigate from any point on the globe to another without any help from the ground. The Global Positioning System (GPS), developed for the United States military but now used by many civilian pilots, provides an airplane with its position to within a few meters. Many airplanes still employ radio receivers that tune to a ground-based radio-beacon system in order to navigate cross-country. Specially equipped airplanes can use ultraprecise radio beacons and receivers, known as Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) and Microwave Landing Systems (MLS), combined with special cockpit displays, to land during conditions of poor visibility.

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V

Propulsion

Airplanes use either piston or turbine (rotating blades) engines to provide propulsion. In smaller airplanes, a conventional gas-powered piston engine turns a propeller, which either pulls or pushes an airplane through the air. In larger airplanes, a turbine engine either turns a propeller through a gearbox, or uses its jet thrust directly to move an airplane through the air. In either case, the engine must provide enough power to move the weight of the airplane forward through the airstream.

The earliest powered airplanes relied on crude steam or gas engines. These piston engines are examples of internal-combustion engines. Aircraft designers throughout the 20th century pushed their engineering colleagues constantly for engines with more power, lighter weight, and greater reliability. Piston engines, however, are still relatively complicated pieces of machinery, with many precision-machined parts moving through large ranges and in complex motions. Although enormously improved over the past 90 years of flight and still suitable for many smaller general aviation aircraft, they fall short of the higher performance possible with modern jet propulsion and required for commercial and military aviation.

The turbine or jet engine operates on the principle of Newton’s third law of motion, which states that for every action, there is an opposite but equal reaction. A jet sucks air into the front, squeezes the air by pulling it through a series of spinning compressors, mixes it with fuel and ignites the mixture, which then explodes with great force rearward through the exhaust nozzle. The rearward force is balanced with an equal force that pushes forward the jet engine and the airplane attached to it. A rocket engine operates on the same principle, except that, in order to operate in the airless vacuum of space, the rocket must carry along its own air, in the form of solid propellant or liquid oxidizer, for combustion.

There are several different types of jet engines. The simplest is the ramjet, which takes advantage of high speed to ram or force the air into the engine, eliminating the need for the spinning compressor section. This elegant simplicity is offset by the need to boost a ramjet to several hundred miles an hour before ram-air compression is sufficient to operate the engine. Scramjets are ramjets that operate at supersonic speeds.

The turbojet is based on the jet-propulsion system of the ramjet, but with the addition of a compressor section, a combustion chamber, a turbine to take some power out of the exhaust and spin the compressor, and an exhaust nozzle. In a turbojet, all of the air taken into the compressor at the front of the engine is sent through the core of the engine, burned, and released. Thrust from the engine is derived purely from the acceleration of the released exhaust gases out the rear.

A modern derivative known as the turbofan, or fan-jet, adds a large fan in front of the compressor section. This fan pulls an enormous amount of air into the engine case, only a relatively small fraction of which is sent through the core for combustion. The rest runs along the outside of the core case and inside the engine casing. This fan flow is mixed with the hot jet exhaust at the rear of the engine, where it cools and quiets the exhaust noise. In addition, this high-volume mass of air, accelerated rearward by the fan, produces a great deal of thrust by itself, even though it is never burned, acting much like a propeller.

In fact, some smaller jet engines are used to turn propellers. Known as turboprops, these engines produce most of their thrust through the propeller, which is usually driven by the jet engine through a set of gears. As a power source for a propeller, a turbine engine is extremely efficient, and many smaller airliners in the 19- to 70-passenger-capacity range use turboprops. They are particularly efficient at lower altitudes and medium speeds up to 640 km/h (400 mph).

VI

Types of Airplanes

There are a wide variety of types of airplanes. Land planes, carrier-based airplanes, seaplanes, amphibians, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), short takeoff and landing (STOL), and space shuttles all take advantage of the same basic technology, but their capabilities and uses make them seem only distantly related.

A

Land Planes

Land planes are designed to operate from a hard surface, typically a paved runway. Some land planes are specially equipped to operate from grass or other unfinished surfaces. A land plane usually has wheels to taxi, take off, and land, although some specialized aircraft operating in the Arctic or Antarctic regions have skis in place of wheels. The wheels are sometimes referred to as the undercarriage, although they are often called, together with the associated brakes, the landing gear. Landing gear may be fixed, as in some general-aviation airplanes, or retractable, usually into the fuselage or wings, as in more-sophisticated airplanes in general and commercial aviation.

B

Carrier-Based Aircraft

Carrier-based airplanes are a specially modified type of land plane designed for takeoff from and landing aboard naval aircraft carriers. Carrier airplanes have a strengthened structure, including their landing gear, to handle the stresses of catapult-assisted takeoff, in which the craft is launched by a steam-driven catapult; and arrested landings, made by using a hook attached to the underside of the aircraft’s tail to catch one of four wires strung across the flight deck of the carrier.

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