by Jamie Bradshaw
Gliding theory was also covered, linking various angles to wingspan and rate of descent, and covering wind and meteorological conditions that affect flying, such as wind direction when it comes to taking off and landing (as the author explains, conducting either of these activities with a tailwind is a bad idea), and paying particular attention to a phenomenon known as a thermal, which is a rising column of air utilised by gliding pilots and soaring birds in order to keep themselves aloft.
The Simple
Science of Flight offers a beginners introduction to the world of aerodynamics.
Defying the conventional logic of avoiding equations in published books, the
author includes around 35 in order to help explain his reasoning. Through the
use of these simple equations and physics reasoning, the book explains the
mechanics of flight in a way that is easily understood, using various
biological and machine examples.
The author unifies the flight concepts so that they can be applied to anything from a jackdaw to a Boeing 747, one of his favourite aircraft. The concepts are explained in a simple way that can be understood by anyone with a basic grasp of physics and algebra. The author correlates all the flight data from both mechanical and biological sources to create a graph he calls the great flight diagram, which shows that all flying things bow to overarching laws dictating things like wingspan, takeoff weight, and speed. This helps the reader to get an overview of the concepts involved and is a very useful diagram to have to hand as the book progresses. The author then begins to explain flight power and efficiency, along with fuel costs and economy of flight versus other modes of transport. The pages are dotted with various graphical representations of birds and aircraft, and included with each are some key aerodynamic properties such as the wingspan and mass of the flying object in question.
The author then goes on to briefly cover the theory of aerodynamic control, and more advanced concepts such as induced drag due to wingtip vortices, which is caused by pressures above and below the wing interacting and creating a vortex at the end of the wing. The pair of wingtip vortices interacts and force each other down, creating a downward stream of air known as a downwash both in front of and behind the wing. This downwash in front of the wing means that more power is required, in the same way that climbing a hill needs more power than walking on flat ground. This extra power is called induced power and is the rate that the wingtip vortices are supplied with kinetic energy. Since power is equal to drag times speed, the induced power divided by airspeed gives the induced drag, which is essentially a loss of energy to the wingtip vortices.
The author unifies the flight concepts so that they can be applied to anything from a jackdaw to a Boeing 747, one of his favourite aircraft. The concepts are explained in a simple way that can be understood by anyone with a basic grasp of physics and algebra. The author correlates all the flight data from both mechanical and biological sources to create a graph he calls the great flight diagram, which shows that all flying things bow to overarching laws dictating things like wingspan, takeoff weight, and speed. This helps the reader to get an overview of the concepts involved and is a very useful diagram to have to hand as the book progresses. The author then begins to explain flight power and efficiency, along with fuel costs and economy of flight versus other modes of transport. The pages are dotted with various graphical representations of birds and aircraft, and included with each are some key aerodynamic properties such as the wingspan and mass of the flying object in question.
The author then goes on to briefly cover the theory of aerodynamic control, and more advanced concepts such as induced drag due to wingtip vortices, which is caused by pressures above and below the wing interacting and creating a vortex at the end of the wing. The pair of wingtip vortices interacts and force each other down, creating a downward stream of air known as a downwash both in front of and behind the wing. This downwash in front of the wing means that more power is required, in the same way that climbing a hill needs more power than walking on flat ground. This extra power is called induced power and is the rate that the wingtip vortices are supplied with kinetic energy. Since power is equal to drag times speed, the induced power divided by airspeed gives the induced drag, which is essentially a loss of energy to the wingtip vortices.
Gliding theory was also covered, linking various angles to wingspan and rate of descent, and covering wind and meteorological conditions that affect flying, such as wind direction when it comes to taking off and landing (as the author explains, conducting either of these activities with a tailwind is a bad idea), and paying particular attention to a phenomenon known as a thermal, which is a rising column of air utilised by gliding pilots and soaring birds in order to keep themselves aloft.
Overall, the
book was a very good read and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone
interested in studying aerodynamics at university, or to anyone who is
interested in flight in general.
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