An aircraft is a vehicle A vehicle is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured (e.g. bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft) which is able to fly Flight is the process by which an object moves either through the air, or movement beyond earth's atmosphere , by generating lift, propulsive thrust or aerostatically using buoyancy, or by simple ballistic movement by being supported by the air The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention , and reducing temperature extremes between day and night. Dry air contains roughly (by volume) 78.09% nitrogen, 20.9, or in general, the atmosphere An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass,and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low. Some planets consist mainly of various gases, but only their outer layer is their of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift In physics, buoyancy is an upward acting force, caused by fluid pressure, that opposes an object's weight. If the object is either less dense than the liquid or is shaped appropriately (as in a boat), the force can keep the object afloat. This can occur only in a reference frame which either has a gravitational field or is accelerating due to a or by using the dynamic lift A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a surface force on it. Lift is defined to be the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is defined to be the component of the surface force parallel to the flow direction of an airfoil An airfoil or aerofoil (in British English) is the shape of a wing or blade (of a propeller, rotor or turbine) or sail as seen in cross-section, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet of fluid to generate thrust in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets and pump-jets. In general, most jet engines are internal combustion engines but non-combusting forms also exist.[1]
Although rockets A rocket or rocket vehicle is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction. Rocket engines push rockets forwards simply by throwing their exhaust backwards and missiles In common military parlance, the word missile describes a powered, guided munition that travels through the air or space, whilst the word rocket describes a powered, unguided munition. Unpowered, guided munitions are known as guided bombs. Powered munitions that travel through water are called torpedoes. A common further sub-division is to also travel through the atmosphere, most are not considered aircraft because they use rocket thrust instead of aerodynamics as the primary means of lift. However, rocket planes A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly-sized jet aircraft, but typically for at most a few minutes of powered operation, followed by a glide. Unhindered by the need for oxygen from the and cruise missiles A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards its target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy. Modern cruise missiles can travel at supersonic or high subsonic speeds, are self-navigating, and can fly on a non- are considered aircraft because they rely on lift from the air.
The human Humans, known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , are the only living species in the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo activity which surrounds aircraft is called aviation Many cultures have built devices that travel through the air, from the earliest projectiles such as stones and spears., the boomerang in Australia, the hot air Kongming lantern, and kites. There are early legends of human flight such as the story of Icarus, and Jamshid in Persian myth , and later, somewhat more credible claims of short-distance. Manned aircraft are flown by an onboard pilot An aviator is a person who flies on aircraft as a profession. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887 as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin 'avis' (meaning bird), coined 1863 by G. de la Landelle in "Aviation ou Navigation Aérienne" ('Aviation or Air Navigation'. The term aviatrix (aviatrice in French) is used for a female. Unmanned aerial vehicles An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV; also known as a remotely piloted vehicle or RPV, or Unmanned Aircraft System ) is an aircraft that flies without a human crew on board the aircraft. Their largest uses are in military applications. To distinguish UAVs from missiles, a UAV is defined as a reusable, uncrewed vehicle capable of controlled, sustained, may be remotely controlled An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV; also known as a remotely piloted vehicle or RPV, or Unmanned Aircraft System ) is an aircraft that flies without a human crew on board the aircraft. Their largest uses are in military applications. To distinguish UAVs from missiles, a UAV is defined as a reusable, uncrewed vehicle capable of controlled, sustained, or self-controlled by onboard computers. Target drones A target drone is an unmanned, remote controlled aerial vehicle, usually used in the training of anti-aircraft crews are an example of UAVs. Aircraft may be classified by different criteria, such as lift type, propulsion, usage and others.
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History
Main article: Aviation history Aviation history refers to the history of development of mechanical flight—from the earliest attempts in kites and gliders to powered heavier-than-air, supersonic and spaceflights See also: Timeline of aviationThe history of aircraft development divides broadly into five eras:
- Pioneers of flight This article is an overview of primarily pre-20th century flying machines and work, and an analysis of the debates over early flying machines. The goal is to examine the properties of flying machines, and to list the claims to allow a proper analysis of all the early flying machines
- First World War World War I was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were
- Inter-war, sometimes called the Golden Age
- Second World War Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland ·
- Postwar era, also called the jet age The Jet Age is a period of history defined by the social change brought about by the advent of large aircraft powered by turbine engines. These aircraft are able to fly much higher, faster, and farther than older piston-powered propliners, making transcontinental and inter-continental travel considerably faster and easier: for example, aircraft
Methods of lift
Lighter than air – aerostats
Aerostats An aerostat is a system that remains aloft primarily through the use of buoyant lighter than air gases to give a vehicle with nearly the same overall density as air. Aerostats include free balloons, airships, and moored balloons. An aerostat's main structural component is its envelope, a lightweight skin containing a lifting gas to provide use buoyancy In physics, buoyancy is an upward acting force, caused by fluid pressure, that opposes an object's weight. If the object is either less dense than the liquid or is shaped appropriately (as in a boat), the force can keep the object afloat. This can occur only in a reference frame which either has a gravitational field or is accelerating due to a to float in the air in much the same way that ships float on the water. They are characterized by one or more large gasbags or canopies, filled with a relatively low density gas such as helium Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and an atomic weight of 4.002602, which is represented by the symbol He. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling and melting points are the lowest among the elements and it exists only as a gas except, hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of 1.00794 u (1.007825 u for Hydrogen-1), hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75 % of the Universe's elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly composed of hydrogen in its or hot air On Nov 21, 1783, in Paris, France, the first untethered manned flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air balloon created on Dec 14, 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers. Recently, balloon envelopes have been made in all kinds of shapes, such as hot dogs, rocket ships, and the shapes of, which is less dense than the surrounding air. When the weight of this is added to the weight of the aircraft structure, it adds up to the same weight as the air that the craft displaces.
Small hot air balloons called sky lanterns Sky lanterns are airborne paper lanterns traditionally found in some Asian cultures. They are constructed from oiled rice paper on a bamboo frame, and contain a small candle or fuel cell composed of a waxy flammable material. When lit, the flame heats the air inside the lantern, thus lowering its density causing the lantern to rise into the air date back to the 3rd century BC, and were only the second type of aircraft to fly, the first being kites A kite is a tethered aircraft. The necessary lift that makes the kite wing fly is generated when air flows over and under the kite's wing, producing low pressure above the wing and high pressure below it. This deflection also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind. The resultant force vector from the lift and drag force.
Originally, a balloon A balloon is a type of aircraft that remains aloft due to its buoyancy. A balloon travels by moving with the wind. It is distinct from an airship, which is a buoyant aircraft that can be propelled through the air in a controlled manner was any aerostat, while the term airship An airship or dirigible is an aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms. Unlike other aerodynamic aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, which produce lift by moving a wing, or airfoil, through the air, aerostatic was used for large, powered aircraft designs – usually fixed-wing[citation needed] – though none had yet been built. The advent of powered balloons, called dirigible balloons, and later of rigid hulls allowing a great increase in size, began to change the way these words were used. Huge powered aerostats, characterized by a rigid A rigid airship was a type of airship in which the envelope retained its shape by the use of an internal structural framework rather than by being forced into shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope as used in blimps and semi-rigid airships outer framework and separate aerodynamic skin surrounding the gas bags, were produced, the Zeppelins A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874 and detailed in 1893. His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894 and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899. Given the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term being the largest and most famous. There were still no fixed-wing aircraft or non-rigid balloons large enough to be called airships, so "airship" came to be synonymous with these aircraft. Then several accidents, such as the Hindenburg disaster The Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed as it was attempting to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, which is located adjacent to the borough of Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 97 people on board, 35 people died in addition in 1937, led to the demise of these airships. Nowadays a "balloon" is an unpowered aerostat, whilst an "airship" is a powered one.
A powered, steerable aerostat is called a dirigible An airship or dirigible is an aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms. Unlike other aerodynamic aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, which produce lift by moving a wing, or airfoil, through the air, aerostatic. Sometimes this term is applied only to non-rigid balloons, and sometimes dirigible balloon is regarded as the definition of an airship (which may then be rigid or non-rigid). Non-rigid dirigibles are characterized by a moderately aerodynamic gasbag with stabilizing fins at the back. These soon became known as blimps A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship without an internal supporting framework or keel. A non-rigid airship differs from a semi-rigid airship and a rigid airship in that it does not have any rigid structure, neither a complete framework nor a partial keel, to help the airbag maintain its shape. Rather, these aircraft rely on both a higher. During the Second World War Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland ·, this shape was widely adopted for tethered balloons; in windy weather, this both reduces the strain on the tether and stabilizes the balloon. The nickname blimp was adopted along with the shape. In modern times any small dirigible or airship is called a blimp, though a blimp may be unpowered as well as powered.
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Interiors Expo Americas Design World Network The new BISCO A2 Sound Barrier has been designed to meet challenging aircraft standards for flammability, smoke density and toxicity (FST), and is already ...
