I understand that the wing of the plane creates downforce, lifting the plane into the air, so how do planes fly upside-down? Wouldn’t the wings start pushing the plane down into the ground once flipped?
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Angle of attack (or incidence, I can’t remember) pushes air down and overcomes the Bernoulli effect. Basically think of a fish flipper that is angled relevant to the direction of the flow, it’s going to push water in one direction and the fish in another. Same with wings. They are angled relevant to the air flow and they push air down, and the airplane up. Forget about Bernoulli for this.
In a manner of speaking, most planes cannot *fly* upside down. They can go upside down once already flying.
High performance aircraft usually have high thrust to weight to keep enough angle of attack to generate lift upside down (wings still angled into the oncoming air).
Aircraft with thrust vectoring can pretty much do whatever they want (that’s where the engines can redirect thrust with the nozzle)
The shape of the wings helps. But lift is generated when there’s more force below the plane pushing up than there is force pulling it down.
All movement, in any direction, is just imbalanced forced.
When a wing starts moving through the air, it starts colliding with that air. The air applies a force to the plane. If the wings were parallel to the ground, the force would be backwards. Wings are angled in a way that the air they move through is pushed down, so the plane is pushed up.
The shape of the wings amplifies this by creating a pressure differential. But fundamentally lift is the same as any other movement.
So how does a plane fly upside down? Same way it flies right way up: By angling the wings and maintaining speed such that there is more air pushing upwards than the combined forces pulling it down.
Yes, wings work upside down.
However unless the wings are vertically symmetrical (like aerobatic planes) they will be very inefficient if used the wrong way (upside down).
You will also have issues getting fuel and oil to the engines since it will slosh to the wrong place in the tank but some planes can tolerate this with special design features.
The amount of lift generated by the airfoil (wing) can be regulated. The various control surfaces, ailerons and horizontal stabilizers can be finely adjusted to maintain level flight. This is called ‘trimming’ the plane. Once a plane is trimmed it can maintain level flight whether it is upright or inverted. This can also be accomplished, more temporarily, by the pilot adjusting the plane’s trajectory/speed/angle of attack with the plane’s controls.
Does anybody remember Richard Russell who stole from Seattle airport the horizon air turboprop plane? He never flown a plane before, but he had used simulators it was reported. He took that plane for some loop de loops and then crashed it or he was helped down by military (shot it?) or something to make sure he didn’t cause any more trouble.
Like this; “Nnnnyyyoowwwwhhhhhrrrmmhmhmh-vrrrrrmmmmmmm-pshewoooo-whhhooowwrrrrrrvvvvvvmmmrrmrm…
Flying upside down is the easy part. It’s taking off from an upside down position that blows my mind.
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Dude, it’s like magnets. You know when you put N-N and they repel each other? It’s like that. The plane flying right side up wants to fall to the ground, but when you fly it upside down, the gravity pushes back and keeps the plane flying.
For anyone who doesn’t automatically see it…. /s
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