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Aircraft performance refers to the ability of airplanes and helicopters to accomplish certain useful things. [1] It is an important consideration when designing and testing aircraft, to ensure the aircraft can be operated in an efficient and economic manner. [ 2 ]
Aircraft engine performance refers to factors including thrust or shaft power for fuel consumed, weight, cost, outside dimensions and life. It includes meeting regulated environmental limits which apply to emissions of noise and chemical pollutants, and regulated safety aspects which require a design that can safely tolerate environmental hazards such as birds, rain, hail and icing conditions.
Fan air redirection is performed by devices called "blocker doors" and "cascade vanes". This is the case on many large aircraft such as the 747, C-17, KC-10, etc. If you are on an aircraft and you hear the engines increasing in power after landing, it is usually because the thrust reversers are deployed.
If aircraft performance were to increase beyond such a barrier, a different propulsion mechanism was necessary. This was the motivation behind the development of the gas turbine engine, the most common form of jet engine. The key to a practical jet engine was the gas turbine, extracting power from the engine itself to drive the compressor.
The relevance for gas turbine-powered aircraft is the use of a secondary jet of air with a propeller or, for jet engine performance, the introduction of the bypass engine. The overall efficiency of the jet engine is thermal efficiency multiplied by propulsive efficiency ( η o = η t h η p r {\displaystyle \eta _{o}=\eta _{th}\eta _{pr}} ).
At high weights this sometimes allows the rotorcraft to lift off while stationary in ground effect but does not allow it to transition to flight out of ground effect. Helicopter pilots are provided with performance charts which show the limitations for hovering their helicopter in ground effect (IGE) and out of ground effect (OGE).
The Cold War prompted the design of an ever-evolving line of high-performance aircraft. Computational fluid dynamics began as an effort to solve for flow properties around complex objects and has rapidly grown to the point where entire aircraft can be designed using computer software, with wind-tunnel tests followed by flight tests to confirm ...
A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air aircraft, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using aerodynamic lift. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft (in which a rotor mounted on a spinning shaft generates lift), and ornithopters (in which the wings oscillate to generate lift).