PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Question on forces acting on an aircraft in climb
Old 7th Jul 2010, 16:30
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italia458
 
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Italia,

But how do you know whether your "Real" weight was caused by gravity, or by acceleration?
First off, gravity is "acceleration".

Your apparent weight is like an "addition" to your weight caused by gravity (real weight). So your apparent weight will include your real weight and the remaining weight will be caused by the other acceleration, ie. in a turn.

Think of it this way. If you're straight and level, you have a certain lift vector, say it's 17640N (1800kg * 9.8m/s2) (1.0G). When you enter a 60 degree level turn you will be feeling a load factor of 2.0G. So now my airplane has to increase it's lift to 35280N (2.0G) to stay level. The lift always acts perpendicular to the wing. So now this has a vertical and horizontal component, the latter of which will pull the aircraft into the turn. 35280N * cos 60 = 17640N which is our vertical component of lift which counters the weight of the aircraft caused by gravity.

So using the load factor in the turn, the cos of the angle of bank and the weight (in newtons) of aircraft on the ground, you can find out the apparent weight at any angle of bank. With that you can subtract the weight of the aircraft and find out specifically how much the acceleration, due to the turn, is adding on to your real weight to end up with your apparent weight.

Does this help?
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