So, I tried reading the wikipedia article covering the subject, but nothing made sense; so if y’all could explain the critical attack and things like that as well, it would be great!!
In: Physics
As a wing’s angle of attack (the angle between the relative wind and the wing) increases, the lift increases until a certain point, after which the angle of attack becomes so high that it introduces turbulence before the air is past the wing, which causes lift to start going back down again. The angles of attack that are greater than peak lift are considered stalled.
How dangerous a stall is depends on two things:
1. How controllable the airplane is during stall. Usually planes are designed so that the part of the wing with control surfaces (ailerons) stall last, so that the pilot can still roll the plane in a stall. For pitch, it is important that the plane be balanced so that the nose goes down during a stall, which causes the angle of attack to decrease until the wing is no longer stalled. If the center of mass is too far back and the turbulent wake of a stalled wing covers the tail to the point where the tail has no control, it is called a “deep stall,” which is very difficult to recover from. Most of the time, a deep stall means that the plane will lose altitude until it crashes into the ground.
2. How close to the ground a plane is when it stalls. Student pilots stall on purpose at high altitude to learn how to recover and return to non-stalled flight (angle of attack on the low side of the lift curve discussed at the beginning). Recovering from a stall involves pointing the nose down and diving briefly, to reduce angle of attack, and then returning to level flight. If you are too close to the ground when you stall, you will crash during stall recovery.
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