Aircraft Performance

At this point of these notes the airplane is considered a rigid body on which four natural forces are exerted: lift, drag, propulsive thrust, and weight. Concern is focused on the movement of the airplane as it responds to these forces. Such considerations form the core of flight dynamics, an important discipline of aerospace engineering. Studies of airplane performance and stability and control both fall under the heading of flight dynamics.

In these studies we will no longer be concerned with aerodynamic details; rather, we will generally assume that the aerodynamicists have done their work and given us the pertinent aerodynamic data for a given airplane. These data are usually packaged in the form of a drag polar for the complete airplane, given as

Equation (\ref{eq:Performance:Drag:Polar}) is valid for the whole aircraft.