Angle of Attack - Relation Between Angle of Attack and Lift

Relation Between Angle of Attack and Lift

The lift coefficient of a fixed-wing aircraft varies uniquely with angle of attack. Increasing angle of attack is associated with increasing lift coefficient up to the maximum lift coefficient, after which lift coefficient decreases.

As the angle of attack of a fixed-wing aircraft increases, separation of the airflow from the upper surface of the wing becomes more pronounced, leading to a reduction in the rate of increase of the lift coefficient. The figure shows a typical curve for a cambered straight wing. A symmetrical wing has zero lift at 0 degrees angle of attack. The lift curve is also influenced by wing planform. A swept wing has a lower flatter curve with a higher critical angle.

Read more about this topic:  Angle Of Attack

Famous quotes containing the words relation, angle, attack and/or lift:

    Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It is a mistake, to think the same thing affects both sight and touch. If the same angle or square, which is the object of touch, be also the object of vision, what should hinder the blind man, at first sight, from knowing it?
    George Berkeley (1685–1753)

    ...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.
    Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)

    Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
    Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)