Schlieren optical systems have been used to visualize shock waves in labs for more than a century, but the technique did not translate well to photographing shock structures outside the lab. But now NASA’s Armstrong Research Center and Ames Research Center have developed a method that allows them to capture highly-detailed images of the shock waves around airplanes while they are flying. This is incredible stuff. Be sure to check out the high-resolution versions on this page, along with more description of the coordination necessary to pull off the photos.
The light and dark lines you see emanating from the airplane are places with strong density gradients. The dark lines are mostly shock waves, with the strongest shock waves appearing black due to the large change in air density. Many of the light streaks are expansion fans, areas where the density and pressure drop as air speeds up.
The goal of this research is to better understand shock wave structures around supersonic planes in order to reduce the noise supersonic aircraft cause when flying overhead. As you can see in the photos, the shock waves at the nose and tail of the aircraft persist far away from the aircraft; these are what cause the twin sonic boom heard when the plane flies by. (Photo credit: NASA; via J. Hertzberg)
Vapor cones typically appear around aircraft flying in the transonic regime–near, but still below, the speed of sound. Air moving over the vehicle accelerates and decelerates as it moves around different parts of the plane; if it didn’t, the plane couldn’t generate lift and wouldn’t fly. When the local flow accelerates past the speed of sound, the accompanying drop in pressure and temperature can be enough to for conditions to fall below the dew point, causing the condensation we see. At the back of the airplane, a shock wave decelerates the airflow back to subsonic speeds and raises local conditions back above the dew point, thereby truncating the cone. (Image credit: C. Caine)
We live at the bottom of a sea of air, surrounded by a constant pressure equal to 101 kPa (14.7 psi) over our entire bodies. For the most part, we don’t notice the pressure air exerts on us. But if you’ve flown on a commercial airplane, you may have noticed some of the effects of changing that air pressure. Flexible sealed containers, like bags of chips or bottles of water, change their shape dramatically over the course of a flight because the air pressure inside them can be greater than the air cabin pressure at altitude. In the video above, Nick Moore measured his in-flight cabin pressure as 84 kPa (12psi), which is equivalent to about 1500 m (5000 ft) above sea level. Why do airlines keep the cabin pressure lower in flight? The biggest reason is because the airplane, like the in-flight snack, is a pressure vessel. At cruising altitudes the outside air pressure is about 24 kPa (3.5 psi). To keep the interior of the cabin habitable, the fuselage of the airplane has to hold a higher pressure. The larger the difference between the interior and exterior pressures, the greater the stress the airplane must withstand. Keeping the air pressure in flight a little lower makes the engineering a little easier and does the occupants no harm. (Video credit: N. Moore)
so, how is lift actually generated? i’ve been going through Anderson’s Introduction to Flight (6th Ed.) and while it offers the derivation of various equations very thoroughly, it barely touches on why lift is generated, or how camber contributes to the increase of C(L)
This is a really good question to ask. There are a lot of different explanations for lift out there (and some of the common ones are incorrect). The main thing to know is that a difference in pressure across the wing–low pressure over the top and higher pressure below–creates the net upward force we call lift. It’s when you ask why there’s a pressure difference across the wing that explanations tend to start diverging. To be clear, aerodynamicists don’t disagree about what produces lift – we just tend to argue about which physical explanation (as opposed to just doing the math) makes the most sense. So here are a couple of options:
Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you look at flow over an airfoil, air approaching the airfoil is angled upward, and the air leaving the aifoil is angled downward. In order to change the direction of the air’s flow, the airfoil must have exerted a downward force on the air. By Newton’s third law, this means the air also exerted an upward force–lift–on the airfoil.
The downward force a wing exerts on the air becomes especially obvious when you actually watch the air after a plane passes:
This one can be harder to understand. Circulation is a quantity related to vorticity, and it has to do with how the direction of velocity changes around a closed curve. Circulation creates lift (which I discuss in some more detail here.) How does an airfoil create circulation, though? When an airfoil starts at rest, there is no vorticity and no circulation. As you see in the video above, as soon as the airfoil moves, it generates a starting vortex. In order for the total circulation to remain zero, this means that the airfoil must carry with it a second, oppositely rotating vortex. For an airfoil moving right to left, that carried vortex will spin clockwise, imparting a larger velocity to air flowing over the top of the wing and slowing down the air that moves under the wing. From Bernoulli’s principle, we know that faster moving air has a lower pressure, so this explains why the air pressure is lower over the top of the wing.
Asymmetric Flow and Bernoulli’s Principle
There are two basic types of airfoils – symmetric ones (like the one in the first picture above) and asymmetric, or cambered, airfoils (like the one in the image immediately above this). Symmetric airfoils only generate lift when at an angle of attack. Otherwise, the flow around them is symmetric and there’s no pressure difference and no lift. Cambered airfoils, by virtue of their asymmetry, can generate lift at zero angle of attack. Their variations in curvature cause air flowing around them to experience different forces, which in turn causes differing pressures along the top and the bottom of the airfoil surface. A fluid particle that travels over the upper surface encounters a large radius of curvature, which strongly accelerates the fluid and creates fast, low-pressure flow. Air moving across the bottom surface experiences a lesser curvature, does not accelerate as much, and, therefore, remains slower and at a higher pressure compared to the upper surface.
Wingtip vortices are the result of high-pressure air from beneath a wing sneaking around the end of the wing to the low-pressure area on top. They trail for long distances behind aircraft, and are, most of the time, an invisible hazard for other aircraft. If you’ve ever sat in a line of airplanes waiting to take off and wondered why there is so much time between subsequent take-offs, wingtip vortices are the answer. The larger a plane, the stronger its vortices are and the greater their effect on a smaller craft. Much of the time between planes taking off (or landing) is to allow the vortices to dissipate so that subsequent aircraft don’t encounter the wake turbulence of their predecessor. Crossing the wake of another plane can cause an unexpected roll that pilots may not be able to safely correct, a factor that’s contributed to major crashes in the past. (Image credits: flugsnug, source video; submitted by entropy-perturbation)
Icing is a major problem for aircraft. When ice builds up on the leading edge of a wing it creates major disruptions in flow around the wing and can lead to a loss of flight control. One of the important factors in predicting and controlling ice building up is knowing when and where water droplets will freeze. The video above shows how surface conditions on the wing affect how an impacting droplet freezes. On a subzero hydrophilic surface, a falling droplet spreads and freezes over a wide area, which would hasten ice buildup. A hydrophobic surface is slightly better, with the droplet freezing over a smaller area, whereas a superhydrophobic surface shows no ice buildup. Unfortunately, at present superhydrophobic surfaces and surface treatments are extremely delicate, making them unsuitable for use on aircraft leading edges. (Video credit: G. Finlay)
Behind airplanes in flight, water vapor from the engine exhaust will sometimes condense in the wingtip vortices, thereby forming visible contrails. The two initially parallel vortex lines are unstable and any small perturbation to them–a slight crosswind, for example–will cause an instability known as the Crow instability. The contrails become wavy, with the amplitude of the wave growing exponentially in time due to interactions between the two vortices. Eventually, the vortex lines can touch and pinch off into vortex rings. The effect is also quite noticeable when smoke generators are used on a plane, and there are some great examples in this air show video between 3:41:00 and 3:44:00. (Video credit: M. Landy-Gyebnar; h/t to Urs)
First off… love your blog! I know very little about physics, but love reading about it. Could you potentially explain what the little upturned ends of wings do? looking on wikipedia is see this: “There are several types of wingtip devices, and although they function in different manners, the intended effect is always to reduce the aircraft’s drag by partial recovery of the tip vortex energy.” huh?
Thanks! That’s a great question. Winglets are very common, especially on commercial airliners. To understand what they do, it’s helpful to first think about a winglet-less airplane wing. Each section of the wing produces lift. For a uniform, infinite wing, the lift produced at each spanwise location would be the same. In reality, though, wings are finite and wingtip vortices at their ends distort the flow. The vortices’ upward flow around the ends of the wing reduces the lift produced at the wing’s outermost sections, making the finite wing less efficient (though obviously more practical) than an infinite wing.
Adding a winglet modifies the end conditions, both by redirecting the wingtip vortices away from the underside of the wing and by reducing the strength of the vortex. Both actions cause the winglet-equipped wing to produce more lift near the outboard ends than a wing without winglets.
But why, you might ask, does the Wikipedia explanation talk about reducing drag? Since a finite wing produces less lift than an infinite one, finite wings must be flown at a higher angle of attack to produce equivalent lift. Increasing the angle of attack also increases drag on the wing. (If you’ve ever stuck a tilted hand out a car window at speed, then you’re familiar with this effect.) Because the winglet recovers some of the lift that would otherwise be lost, it allows the wing to be flown at a lower angle of attack, thereby reducing the drag. Thus, overall, adding winglets improves a wing’s efficiency. (Photo credit: C. Castro)
Newton’s third law says that forces come in equal and opposite pairs. This means that when air exerts lift on an airplane, the airplane also exerts a downward force on the air. This is clear in the image above, which shows a an A380 prototype launched through a wall of smoke. When the model passes, air is pushed downward. The finite size of the wings also generates dramatic wingtip vortices. The high pressure air on the underside of the wings tries to slip around the wingtip to the upper surface, where the local pressure is low. This generates the spiraling vortices, which can be a significant hazard to other nearby aircraft. They are also detrimental to the airplane’s lift because they reduce the downwash of air. Most commercial aircraft today mitigate these effects using winglets which weaken the vortices’ effects. (Image credit: Nat. Geo./BBC2)
Ice build-up is a major hazard on airplane wings and control surfaces, but ice can accrete on internal engine components, too. When this happens, the turbofan jet engine can lose power. Such incidents have been observed in high-altitude flight even when pilots observed little to no inclement weather. Researchers think this ice accretion may occur when the plane flies through a cloud of tiny ice crystals. These ice crystals get ingested into the engine, where they hit the warmer internal surfaces and melt. Over the course of the flight, the engine components cool off due to this influx of ice and water. Eventually, ice begins to form and grow inside the engine, ultimately resulting in power loss. Researchers have recreated such ice cloud conditions in a facility at NASA Glenn Research Center and tested a full-scale jet engine for ice accretion. They aim to gather the data necessary to improve commercial engine capabilities under ice ingestion. (Video credit: NASA Glenn Research Center)
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