Friday, September 23, 2011

How does the elevator on a plane work?

how does it tell the plane to go up or down?|||The pilot or the control system tells the elevators to go up or down. This deflection of the elevators puts its surfaces at an angle with the airflow and this results in a force being applied on the elevator by the airflow. It is this resultant force that generates a torque about the aircraft's center of gravity along the pitch axis. This torque makes the aircraft's nose point up or down accordingly.





This action is analogous to a deflection in a boat, just that the resulting change of direction is in the horizontal plane.|||When the elevator moves down, it pushes the tail up, rotating the aircraft about its pitch axis (the aircraft's center of gravity being near the main wings), which in turn pitches the nose down. Vice versa when the elevator moves the other way.|||The elevators simply raises or lowers the rear of the aircraft in reference to the line of flight. Raise the rear of the aircraft and the nose pitches down, lower the rear of the aircraft and the nose pitches up.|||You push the top button, it goes up. Push the bottom button, it goes down. Simple as that.|||I could try and explain it, but NASA can do it better than me...





http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplan鈥?/a>|||I think you are talking about the one in the wing. When it goes up the plane goes down. When down, down.

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