how does lift and thrust operate in an aeroplane being airbound ?

Answer 1

Airplane wiings are generally curved surfaces (serious exceptions are the super-sonics although even they have curves for operating below the speed of sound).

The underside of a wing is nearly flat, and the upper side is deeply curved. As the machine moves through air (an expansible fluid) the path above the wing is longer than the path under, yet before and after, the air is together; the way this happens is that the air is stretched and becomes thinner above the wing and has less pressure. The difference of air pressure above and below the wing is the lift. This same principle is in operation with propellors; they spin around an axis, the thrust they develop is "above " the curved surfaces, in the direction of the axis. (In the case of an airplane, toward the front of the plane although the exact angle is adjusted to balance drag and other factors, in the case of a helicopter vertical, and tilted to make forward thrust, although the effective difference in speed between the front of the rotor and the back of the rotor path requires the parts to be hinged) Jet engines are complicated, but over all they make thrust and are mounted on the airframe so that thrust is in the forward direction (except when thrust reversers are applied at the end of landing, and in the case of Harrier jets).

Take-off and landing operate the wings at greater than usual angles and with flaps if available (flaps are moveable surfaces that make the wing both wider and more curved).[[Width here means front to back; length of wings is from tip to tip]]. This is a balancing act, and there are limits; eventually the plane will mush out, or stall.

Answer 2

There are four main forces that affect an airplane in flight, lift, weight, drag and thrust.

Drag is the action of air friction trying to slow the plane down. We use thrust to overcome drag.

When the thrust is greater than the drag, the plane accelerates. When the thrust is equal to the drag, the plane flies at a constant speed. When thrust is less than the drag, the plane will slow and eventually come to a stop.

Lift is produced when air passes across the plane's wings. The wings are curved on top and so the air going across the top of the wings moves faster than the air passing beneath its wings. The faster moving air creates a lower air pressure than that below and the result is that the plane is sucked upwards.

If the lift of a plane is lower than its weight, then the plane will stay on the ground. If the lift of a plane is the same as its weight, the plane will stay at the same level. If the lift is greater than its weight, it will rise up off the ground.


Since the speed at which air crosses the wing is in part controlling how much lift is produced, thrust (which overcomes drag and makes the plane go faster) is necessary to speed the plane up and create lift.

The thing that limits how high a plane can fly is that the higher they fly, the thinner the air becomes and the less lift is produced.

I hope that helps without getting too technical.

Answer 3

Hard to explain without diagrams but I'll try. First the thrust. Whether its from a propeller or a jet its probably one of Newtons laws. Blast of air or gas pushed rearwards has its equal and opposite reaction pushing the aircraft forward. Simple enough. As the aircraft moves forwards, air passes over and under the wings. A very simple wing cross section would show that the bottom surface is flat and the top surface is curved. this means that the air travelling over the top surface travels further on its journey from the wings leading edge to trailing edge than the air which passes over the bottom surface. If you now imagine a small block of air hitting the wings leading edge and being split to pass over the top and bottom surfaces. The portion travelling over the top has to move faster to arrive at the trailing edge at the same time as the part travelling over the bottom surface. If it didn't arrive at the same time, a vacuum would be created and as we know , nature abhors a vacuum. Now for a little bit i've never fully understood. The faster air passes over a surface, the less pressure it exerts . Please just accept this as a fact of life. You now have a situation where the air is passing over the top surface faster than the air passing over the lower surface. Thus, the pressure on the top surface is less than the pressure on the bottom surface resulting in the wing (and aircraft) being pushed upwards) - the lift . Hope you understood this.

Answer 4

basically the rolls royce turbo jet engines drive those bad boyz really fast and Bernoulli's equations takes dem really high.