The Major Components of an Aircraft, Essay Example

It’s far from arguable that learning to fly is a complex endeavor.  There is a host of techniques, regulations and equipment to master, so starting with a sound understanding of the basics is essential.  The best place to start is a study of the main components of an aircraft:  the fuselage, wings, empennage, landing gear, and powerplant.

The fuselage is what most people would see as “the body” of the plane; it houses the cabin, storage space and controls, and holds all of the other pieces of the plane together.  The fuselage is hollow and relatively light in an effort to reduce weight.  Like most of the other parts of the plane, fuselages vary in shape based on the mission of the plane.  For example, fighter jets have slender, streamlined fuselages to allow for high-speed flight, while commercial airliners have wide bodies for accommodating large amounts of cargo and people.  In either design, the fuselage is covered with a thin metallic skin, and is insulated to control the temperature of the cabin and cockpit.  Although it is considered the central part of the plane, there are instances where the fuselage doesn’t exist at all; “flying wing” aircraft like stealth bombers, drones, and spy planes are built without a central body in order to decrease weight and detection.  However, without a fuselage to support a stabilizing tail, these craft can be difficult to control.

That stabilizing tail houses the instruments in an array called the empennage.  The empennage includes the horizontal and vertical stabilizers, rudder, trim tabs and elevator.  The horizontal stabilizer is used to prevent the plane from pitching up or down, while the vertical stabilizer prevents yawing (twisting) back and forth.  With the vertical stabilizer, the rudder is attached to the tail structure and is an airfoil used to make turns.  The trim tabs are used to relieve pressure on the controls in the cockpit.  For example, trim tabs on a rudder alleviate the need for a pilot to operate the rudder pedal constantly in order to overcome the plane’s turning tendencies.  The elevator allows for a controlled change of pitch, which in turn changes the angle of attack on the wing and results in positioning the plane nose-up or nose-down.  This action increases or decreases lift, which enables the plane to take off or land.

Among the basic components of a plane, none are more recognizable than the wings, which are the airfoils attached to the sides of the top, middle, or bottom portion of the fuselage.  Wings create and maintain flight by helping to balance the forces that bombard the plane:  lift, weight, drag, and thrust. As weight pulls the plane down, air flowing across the wings while in motion provides the necessary lift to climb into air and stay in flight.  Wings also house a system of ailerons and flaps that cause the plane to roll and increase or decrease the lifting force for proper takeoffs and landings. There are numerous wing designs, sizes and shapes that are produced according to the purpose of the plane. The conventional straight wing extends from the fuselage at a right angle, and there are also designs that incorporate forward or backward-swept wings, triangle-shaped delta wings, and dihedral wings that are angled up from the bottom of the fuselage.  All these shapes affect flight in various ways.

As the wings balance weight and lift, the airplane’s powerplant contains the components necessary to balance drag and thrust.  It consists of the engines and drives all the various systems that operate the airplane.  In smaller propeller-driven craft, the engine turns the airfoils of the propeller that push or pull the plane through the air.  In larger planes, thrust is provided by jet engines that pull air with turbines.  The powerplant also generates electricity that can be stored in the battery, provides a vacuum source to power gyroscopes and other instruments, and in smaller craft provides a heat source for the pilot and the passengers.

No airplane is complete without proper landing gear.  There are three common types of landing gear:  conventional, tricycle and tandem.  Conventional landing gear consists of two wheels in font of the plane’s center of gravity and a third small wheel under the tail. This form is commonly found in older general aviation planes and can be difficult to control on landing because of its free-moving tail wheel. The tricycle configuration has a more stable design with a front wheel under the nose and two main wheels, making the plane less likely to pitch forward.  The tandem landing gear is used for larger aircraft, composed of two sets of wheels on the fuselage.  Depending on the plane’s size and load, tandem gear may also include a set of smaller wheels positioned on the wings to prevent them from scraping the ground.

Understanding the major components of your aircraft is a strong beginning point for the study of aviation.  With a complete basis of information, it is easier to correctly execute procedures and work intelligently with engineers and mechanics on maintaining a plane’s optimal performance.