Abstract
The flight envelope is the region of velocity-normal acceleration space that defines the conditions under which an aircraft may be safely flown without significant risk of mechanical failure. It is bracketed by the manoeuvre and gust envelopes, which define the safe ranges of airspeed and normal acceleration for manoeuvring and for operating in gust conditions respectively. This chapter describes how to calculate these conditions for any given aircraft, and what the relevant civil airworthiness standards deem to be minimum acceptable values.
When it comes to testing new aircraft or determining maximum performance, pilots like to talk about pushing the envelope…. So, the pilots are pushing that upper-right-hand corner of the envelope. What everybody tries not to dwell on is that that’s where the postage gets cancelled, too.
Admiral Rick Hunter, U.S. Navy.
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Notes
- 1.
Aileron reversal—that is, the tendency of a wing to deflect with the torque loading due to aileron deflection so as to first became an issue in WWII, where it was a problem with the early Griffon engined Spitfires. However, it is still potentially an issue and aircraft still exist which suffer from it.
- 2.
For most civil standards, this will be about paragraph 341.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Gratton, G. (2015). The Flight Envelope. In: Initial Airworthiness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11409-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11409-5_4
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11409-5
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