What exactly is turbulence, and is it at all an indication of danger during a flight?
In: Physics
Very simply, it’s a strong gust of wind that affects the normal motion of the plane.
It is however very rarely dangerous as planes have been built and pilots have been trained with this in mind. Most injuries occur from passengers not taking the recommended precautions of staying in their seats and having all overhead lockers closed.
Turbulence happens when the airflow over the wings is no longer smooth, resulting in more movement from the wings. Imagine going from smooth tarmac to a gravel road.
It is not an indication of danger, no. Turbulence would have to be _very_ extreme to pose any sort of threat. It’s usually just uncomfortable. At worst you might bump your head if you’re moving at the wrong time.
It’s identical to hitting waves with a boat. Air is a fluid and behaves just like water except it’s mostly invisible.
Turbulence in airplanes refers to sudden and irregular changes in airflow that can cause the aircraft to experience shaking or jolting movements. It’s often caused by atmospheric conditions, such as changes in air pressure, temperature, or wind speed. Pilots are trained to handle turbulence, and modern aircraft are designed to withstand these conditions for passenger safety.
Turbulence is when the air has got a lot of motion in it, its the airplane equivalent of rough seas for ships
It is not an indication of danger for the integrity of the aircraft, it can be an indicator of danger to people moving around in the cabin and bumping their heads and such. Not the safest time to breakout the food cart amd roll it down the aisle
But aircraft are designed for quite extreme turbulence, far more than almost anyone will experience, it does not pose a threat as long as everyone is seated and secure
Imagine a thunderstorm. Above the thunderstorm hot air is going up. It is hot because it rained. You are cold when you get out of the shower. This is like that, but backwards; latent heat is released so air is hot and it rises. That rising hot air is replaced with cool air dropping, because nature abhors a vacuum.
So the plane is flying horizontally through rising air in some places and falling air in others. Things shake when you hit the boundary.
Think of it this way, when you are riding in someone’s heavy duty off road truck across rough terrain do you worry the truck will fall apart or explode? The sky is never paved and all planes are heavy duty. When I was taking aerodynamics classes they explained how the wings were tested for wind gusts several times what they expected. A modern airliner can have it’s wings bent in a test rig nearly vertical without breaking.
The only danger from heavy turbulence at altitude is some moron will be up walking the aisle and get knocked off his feet into your face. The fasten seat belts sign is no joke.
Short answer, an aircraft experiences turbulence as it moves through air that is changing direction and velocity, similar to a boat as it hits waves. It is rarely dangerous.
Longer answer, there are different types and severity of turbulence. The light turbulence you often encounter is just slight variations in the air as you fly through it.
Moderate turbulence, while not dangerous to the aircraft, is noticeable and you would have a hard time walking, or your drink might spill. One might encounter this while entering the jet stream, flying around thunderstorms, flying through thermals on a hot summer day, or flying over mountain ranges.
Severe turbulence is extremely rare, and causes a momentary loss of control for the aircraft. If you were walking down the aisle and suddenly hit severe turbulence, you might find your head on the ceiling. This is more likely to be found if a plane accidentally penetrates a thunderstorm or other severe weather. In over a decade of flying, I’ve never experienced severe turbulence. We are actually prohibited from flying through it if we know it exists.
Extreme turbulence is the highest severity, and can cause structural damage to the aircraft. It is incredibly rare, and would most likely be associated with severe thunderstorms, which we avoid.
There is also wake turbulence, which is turbulence generated by all aircraft as they fly through the air. A smaller aircraft flying through a larger aircraft’s wake turbulence can be highly dangerous, but there are techniques we use to avoid it.
Some of the most dangerous aviation related weather phenomenon are microbursts (a form of windshear), which are produced by thunderstorms. Basically a sudden, massive downdraft that drops from the sky. While flying into a microburst might not actually be that turbulent per se, the downdrafts can overpower a jet aircraft and cause them to crash low to the ground. Modern airlines have onboard systems to detect windshear, so we can firewall the thrust and get away from the ground.
The biggest concern we have as airline pilots is how stupid we will look if we encounter turbulence immediately after turning the seat belt sign off.
That’s about as far as our concerns about turbulence go.
Imagine you’re on a boat and hit some rocky waters, that’s meant to happen you’re perfectly fine, now imagine your on a boat in the sky with 100s of other people and a few screaming children and hit some rough waves in the air the sky boat is meant to withstand that although the screaming children might start shutting themselves, the sky boat isnt meant to ventilate the shit smell out of the boat
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