Timeline for Is there a maximum possible size for an airplane?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 10, 2021 at 22:32 | vote | accept | Deschele Schilder | ||
| Jul 7, 2019 at 16:01 | comment | added | Peter Green | @h22 You seem to be assuming that the planes are flying in a straight line through uniform air. As soon as the plane wants to bank to initiate a turn then there will be significant stresses through your wingtip to wingtip connection. | |
| May 12, 2016 at 6:28 | comment | added | h22 | I am not sure if effects other than linear apply in a well designed system. The formation of say 2 planes flying together has the same ratios and fuel consumption per mass as a single plane. Just connecting them on wingtips should not worsen the things dramatically. | |
| May 10, 2016 at 21:48 | comment | added | Howard Miller | The size and shape of aircraft often are decided by other things besides efficiency. For instance, the Super Guppy, which was designed to carry ungainly loads like rocket boosters. Someone I once knew flew on an empty Super Guppy and played touch football while the plane was in flight. d2rormqr1qwzpz.cloudfront.net/photos/2015/07/08/… | |
| May 10, 2016 at 6:48 | comment | added | Deschele Schilder | I think the scaling law is not a square cube law. But if the lifting area gets twice as big, the plane certainly can´t get twice as big too, because the mass for the airplane will be more than twice as big. | |
| May 9, 2016 at 7:17 | vote | accept | Deschele Schilder | ||
| Mar 10, 2021 at 22:32 | |||||
| May 8, 2016 at 15:00 | comment | added | Pharap | @wythagoras I think the square-cube law is still worth a mention at least. The actual values might not be completely cubic due to shape change, but the relation to the square-cube law might make the explanation easier to understand for those less well-versed in mathematics. | |
| May 8, 2016 at 14:50 | comment | added | wythagoras | @Pharap It is not really the square-cube law. It can also be less than cubic (that was a bad assumption on my point, so I edited my answer), but it is certainly more than quadratic, because there is really extra material needed to increase strength. As Ben Crowell points out, the shape can change, as in Peter Kämpf's answer. However, we can't to that with, say, four planes, because it is likely to break in the middle, unless we add more materials and hence more mass to make it stronger. | |
| May 8, 2016 at 14:46 | history | edited | wythagoras | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 12 characters in body
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| May 8, 2016 at 14:45 | comment | added | Pharap | I won't pretend to understand the equation, but I do recognise the square-cube law when I see it, and I think it should be explicitly named and a relevant resource linked to. | |
| May 7, 2016 at 22:00 | comment | added | user7915 | You can't naively apply scaling rules like this. Scaling rules assume that certain things stay constant, e.g., the shape of the object. There is no reason to make such an assumption. | |
| May 7, 2016 at 13:13 | review | First posts | |||
| May 7, 2016 at 13:28 | |||||
| May 7, 2016 at 13:09 | history | answered | wythagoras | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
