Engineering Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [aerospace-engineering]

Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the research, design, development, construction, and testing of aircraft and spacecraft.

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How to make smoke for a small wind tunnel?

I am making a small (desktop) wind tunnel for educational purposes, I want to have 10 fairly thick smoke-streams about 3cm apart. I have experimented with incense but the stream is not thick enough and barely visible. I was thinking of using a pipe…
jhabbott
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What is the difference between aeronautical and aerospace engineering?

Every time I search for "aeronautical engineering" on Google I see a few results about aerospace engineering. So they must be similar, but what is different about these careers?
Ethan
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Is interference between aircraft an issue for fly-by-wireless technology?

I was reading up on fly-by-wire development, and I saw a short section about fly-by-wireless technology. It seems like a great idea, with the potential to lower costs, weight and complexity. I can see a possible scenario where it could be an issue,…
HDE 226868
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How is lift related to airspeed?

Lift produced by an airplane wing is related to airspeed - this much is clear; a plane moving too slowly will stall. But what is that relation? Linear? Quadratic? Exponential? I don't need the exact equation, which is surely quite complex, just the…
SF.
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Would a "lifting body" design be useful for a train car?

Lifting Body The idea of a lifting body design is to shape a vehicle's body in such a way as to produce lift without wings. Research has shown that this can be an efficient method of reducing drag while still providing lift. This has typically done…
hazzey
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MIMO (multi input - multi output) system decoupling method

A MIMO system with 2 input and 2 output decoupling method to a SISO system is described in many articles and books. How about m*n size transfer functions systems? How can we generalize the method for example to 3*3 or 3*7 MIMO systems? Here is a 2*2…
lahidj
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How are wind tunnel models used when designing supersonic aircraft?

There are two things involved: wave drag and boundary layer separation. The wave drag depends on the Mach number while the latter depends on the Reynolds number of the flow. It's easy to maintain the incoming Mach number as it is independent of the…
Subodh
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Could air-launched space planes reach escape velocities?

Rockets like the Ariane 5 weigh hundreds of tons, but with about 85% of that weight being fuel, the payload fraction is only about 3% (~10-20 tons). Virgin Galactic is building suborbital space planes, mostly for tourism purposes. They fly at about…
NoDataDumpNoContribution
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Can we add treadmill-like structures over the airplane surfaces to reduce friction, decrease drag and producing energy?

I am curious about a method to enhance the efficiency of passenger aircraft during cruise speeds by integrating treadmill-like structures on the fuselage and beneath the wings without changing the original shape of the aircraft and the…
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Efficiency in a gas turbine or aircraft engine

Most modern aircraft engines, such as the one depicted below taken from Wikipedia, are composed of several compressor stages which are driven by a turbine (or several), and a combustion chamber in-between, in order to increase the temperature of the…
Nicolas
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I have a problem with my representation of roll in Simulink

I am currently an engineering student and a member of the aerospace club of my engineering school (ESILV) which is called LéoFly. We’re a team of 12 students and are building a Fusex (Experimental Rocket) for the launch campaign of the CNES in…
Axel JOLY
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What are the advantages of chemical oxygen generation over compressed tank storage?

Chemical oxygen generation (COG) is used in commercial airliners to supply emergency oxygen to passengers and crew if the plane is depressurized. Weight for weight it produces far more oxygen than compressed oxygen tanks. I read the original paper…
Leavenotrace
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Why use non-dimensional coefficients?

Aerospace engineering textbooks make frequent use of non-dimensional coefficients like $C_L$, $C_D$ and a whole host of others. Usually, for equations of motion, it is preferred to replace variables with non-dimensional coefficients. However,…
Joshua Koelewijn
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What is the equation to calculate the Thrust coefficient within a set of parameters?

In the book, Design of Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engines, there is a practice problem written as such. "Determine the design values of $(C_*), (C_f), and (I_s)_t$ for the engine thrust chambers of the stages of the hypothetical Alpha vehicle, with…
fftk4323
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Did Otto Lilienthal ever experiment with non-human-powered aircraft?

Otto Lilienthal, sometimes hailed as the first aviator, became famous for his many gliders, which pioneered new experiments in aeronautics. However, powered aircraft didn't take off - pun intended - until the Wright brothers successfully flew their…
HDE 226868
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