Construction and Design
Early aircraft often employed doped aircraft fabric covering to give a smooth aeroshell stretched over a wooden frame. Later aircraft employed trusses, and monocoque techniques, where the skin of the aircraft carries much of the flight loads. Modern aircraft typically are a semi-monocoque, where the skin is reinforced with longerons and stringers.
Aircraft are designed according to many factors such as customer and manufacturer demand, safety protocols and physical and economic constraints. For many types of aircraft the design process is regulated by national airworthiness authorities.
The key parts of an aircraft are generally divided into three categories:
- The airframe comprises the mechanical structure and associated equipment.
- The propulsion system (if it is powered) comprises the engine or engines and associated equipment.
- The avionics comprise the electrical flight control and communication systems.
Read more about this topic: Aircraft
Famous quotes containing the words construction and/or design:
“No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)