Overview
For this assignment, your instructor will assign a propeller-driven, single-engine, general aviation aircraft. You will research airfoils, apply physical laws concepts, and create a narrated presentation. You are expected to present your information as if teaching the concepts to someone who is not a pilot and is not familiar with aviation. These assignments allow you to build on our professional abilities to create and present college-level presentations that we would be proud to take into our prospective industries.
Details
Refer to ASCI 309 2.1 Assignment Lifts and Airfoils (DOCX) for the requirements of this assignment.
All provided answers must exemplify the concepts with specific numbers/values for your aircraft. For example, we are not looking for the stall speed as given in the POH or on Wikipedia; we want to see how you derived a calculated stall speed based on your airfoil data, the particulars of your selected aircraft, and the application of the lift equation. Therefore, you must research additional information and/or use your formula knowledge from this week’s readings to derive all the variables necessary to solve the lift equation.
As a starting point and the minimum content to cover, a shortlist of considerations and discussion points are provided below and can be directly copied into your presentation:
- Main airfoil for your assigned aircraft
- Stall AOA and associated CLmax
- Zero-lift AOA
- Comparison of your main airfoil to a symmetric airfoil
- Resultant attribute discussions for your assigned aircraft
- Calculated stall speed.
- How does lift change with airspeed if a constant AOA and altitude are held? (provide specific examples)
- How does lift change with altitude if a constant AOA and airspeed are held? (provide specific examples)
- How do the required CL and AOA for your specific aircraft (at a specific weight) change with changes in airspeed? (provide specific examples)
- What happens if the required CL is larger than CLmax of your airfoil, and what speed regime is usually associated with that condition? Compare your main airfoil to a symmetric airfoil.
The key to answering some questions is to provide specific calculation examples for your aircraft that showcase the points made. You could do so in various forms, including self-generated tables and graphs or comparisons of key cases (e.g., comparing a low, medium, and high altitude case). You will notice that all such calculations are ultimately based on repeated but different applications of the lift equation. Therefore, to apply the lift equation, a couple of aspects about your aircraft have to be known (i.e., researched) or assumed (i.e., detailed in your explanations). These parameters include:
- Wing configuration (may include wingspan, wing area, aspect ratio, average chord, etc.—remember that the lift equation ultimately requires wing area)
- The weight of the aircraft (probably somewhat assumed but should fall between the empty and max weight of the aircraft)
When doing any math, round to the nearest hundredth value (0.01), always include your units, and show your work for full credit.
Requirements
Support your work with equations, diagrams, and dialogue as appropriate. There is no minimum or maximum number of slides; simply follow the steps in the document provided and be sure to answer all of the questions. You should utilize tools such as Math Type to help with the overall presentation rather than inserting photos of handwritten work. Include an APA-formatted reference slide.
Please visit the Field Exercises and Presentation Resources page for pertinent spreadsheets, resources, and websites that may assist you in completing this assignment.
Please review the Media Hub, a multimedia resource guide/ERAU,Links to an external site. for suggested software tools and resources you can use for your course activity.