14.7 Exercise 42

A frequently quoted rule of thumb in aircraft design is that wings should produce about 1000 N of lift per square meter of wing. (The fact that a wing has a top and bottom surface does not double its area.) (a) At takeoff, an aircraft travels at 60.0 m/s, so that the air speed relative to the bottom of the wing is 60.0 m/s. Given the sea level density of air as $1.29 \text{kg}/\text{m}^{3}$, how fast must it move over the upper surface to create the ideal lift? (b) How fast must air move over the upper surface at a cruising speed of 245 m/s and at an altitude where air density is one-fourth that at sea level? (Note that this is not all of the aircraft’s lift—some comes from the body of the plane, some from engine thrust, and so on. Furthermore, Bernoulli’s principle gives an approximate answer because flow over the wing creates turbulence.)