Understanding Aircraft Design

[Bhartiya Sainik]

Hello everyone,
Since childhood, Aircraft became part of our life in form of toys.
The very sight of it amazes people. Its sound gives goosebumps.
The global R&D in last 100 years has given some exceptional aircrafts of different types.
Numerous documentaries have been made, articles published.
People wonder what leads to a particular design.

Let's make a step by step effort to share our knowledge about airframe design -
- Basic diagram of an airplane
- How airplane flies
- Basic parts of airplane
- Types of airplanes
- Why airplanes look different w.r.t. their body, wings, etc
- Key differences b/w Civil & Military planes
- How a type of airplane is designed
- How improvements take place
- When/Why a design becomes obsolete & a generation leap occurs
- etc

Let's get started.
Basic parts of Aircraft visible on outside including control surfaces -

There are many ways to classify aircrafts - Passenger/Cargo, Civil/Military, Fighter/Bomber, Fixed-wing/rotary,

Below is a basic diagram of passenger, cargo jets -
It can be said to be simplest design today, a tube with wings.

A fighter jet overall may also have a conventional design with straight wings, tails, rudders, although improved by different shape & angles. The engines become part of fuselage.

On the outsie, there are some other control surfaces like Strakes, LERX (Leading Edge Root Extension), wing fence, Winglet, vortex generators, etc.

There is a Blended wing body concept.

The closest jets to BWB are B-1 Lancer & Tu-160 Blackjack

And then we have the famous flying wing like XB-35, YB-49, B-2

Each of these parts or characteristics have individual massive research. We will try to individually explore them in future posts.