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
Let us do some math…the max Takeoff weight of the A380 is 543000kg….the wings effectively have to produce an upward force greater than this to get it airborne….the wing area is 843sq metres or 8430000sq cm……so if upward pressure on wings is greater than 0.067 kg/sq cm or 0.9 PSI the aircraft will lift off…..compare this to the pressure on your car tyre 35 PSI…..so technically your car tyre has 35 times more stress than the wings of A380.
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