PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - United Flight 93, What actually happened ? [somewhat edited by JT]
Old 16th Aug 2006, 12:19
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chornedsnorkack
 
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Originally Posted by Mad (Flt) Scientist


No, as stated, aerodynamic forces can change VERY fast - as fast as the airflow can change, which is limited only by the speed of sound in a fluid dynamics sense. if you take the typical wing chord as, say, 30ft, and the aircraft speed at 300knots, you'll see that the wing is encountering a completely new "patch of air" every 0.06 seconds (~150m/s speed, 10m length) which means that the order of magnitude time for significant changes in aerodynamic forces is also less than one tenth of a second.
Originally Posted by Mad (Flt) Scientist
Please ignore the engines; they are NOT anything to do with the peaks and troughs in vertical accel for this incident. it's changes in angle of attack, causing changes in lift, and there's nothing unusual required to explain it.
Which is why aerodynamic forces cannot change very fast. The lift has the maximum upward value at stall - AoA about 15...20 degrees - and maximum downward value at inverted stall - AoA about minus 15...20 degrees.

Turning a 50 m long plane by 30 degrees of pitch axis takes some time...
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