I was recently flying on an A380 and from my window seat, I could see the vast expanse of the wing. It was HUGE – you could play badminton (or cricket for those who are familiar) on it.
And I just couldn’t fathom how it holds up with most of its length having no support. It’s carrying the weight of thousands of litres of fuel and two large engines, while being subjected to all the forces there would be while taking off, landing, and in-flight banking, turbulence, etc.
What is the engineering that causes them to not break?
In: Engineering
Engineer here. We use what’s called safety factor. We design the wing to be a minimum of 50% stronger than we ever need it to be.
Here’s more: we define “design loads” or forces that we expect the wings to carry throughout the flight envelope during its life. We multiple those loads by 1.5 and then design, build, and test the actual wings to ensure they won’t structurally fail.
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