eli5 why are flaps extended during takeoff if they slow down the plane?
In: Engineering
Because otherwise you would need to accelerate to VERY high speed to be able to take off, that causes tires to blow, or you need excessive angle of attack to lift off from the ground, which may not be geometrically possible since the tail would hit the ground.
After you lift off, ground effect diminishes, if you barely made it up, it would be time to drop like a rock now.
Flaps fix that by increasing wing surface area and curvature, allowing more lift generation at slower airspeeds and lower AoAs, at the cost of moderate increase in drag. The takeoff performance and wing design is calculated so that this trade-off is worthwhile.
There are commercial airliners permitting no-flap as a possible takeoff configuration given correct weights and altitude, but most Airbus/Boeing aircraft do not.
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