Abstract
ONE used to recognise that the exigencies of flight in the tenuous air prescribed a limit to the bulk of a bird, as compared for example with a whale. Yet nowadays every day loads of twenty tons of stuff or possibly far more are carried over long journeys, owing to the power available, solely on wings. How does the attenuated aerial medium find means of supporting such an astonishing mass? To experts the fact is familiar, and so scarcely demands explanation. Indeed, the source of the support in plain terms is just as wonderful as the fact itself. The load is held up solely by the swirl that it produces and leaves behind, and this vertical support must be the only dynamical effect of the swirl when the speed is steady: there remains the question how precisely this result is adjusted. Unfortunately the wakes from screw and wings can scarcely be additive without some mutual interference, though momenta are additive always. For example the spread of the wings is adapted readily to counteract the rotational grip of the screw. Stability is theoretically (G. H. Bryan) another affair.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
LARMOR, J. What Determines the Resistance and the Tilt of an Aeroplane?1. Nature 119, 798 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119798a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119798a0