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Principles of Aeronautics
Principles of Aeronautics

Editor
Richard M. Renneboog, M.Sc.

SALEM PRESS
A Division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc.
Ipswich, Massachusetts

GREY HOUSE PUBLISHING

Cover photo: Jetlinerimages/iStock.

Copyright © 2023, by Salem Press, A Division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc., and Grey
House Publishing, Inc.

Principles of Aeronautics, published by Grey House Publishing, Inc., Amenia, NY, under exclusive li-
cense from EBSCO Information Services, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or
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Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by Parlew Associates, LLC)

Names: Renneboog, Richard M., editor.

Title: Principles of aeronautics / editor, Richard M. Renneboog, M.Sc.
Description: Ipswich, MA : Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc. ; Amenia,
NY : Grey House Publishing, 2023. | Series: [Principles of science]. | Includes bibliographic
references and index. | Includes b&w photos and illustrations.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781637004203 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Aeronautics — Encyclopedias. | Aviation -- Encyclopedias. | Flight — Encyclo-
pedias. | Rocketry — Encyclopedias. | BISAC: SCIENCE / Mechanics / Aerodynamics. |
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Aeronautics & Astronautics. | TECHNOLOGY &
ENGINEERING / Reference.
Classification: LCC TL546.7 R46 2023 | DDC 629.13 --dc23

First Printing
Printed in the United States of America
 Contents
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Advanced Composite Materials in
Aeronautical Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Advanced Composite Materials Repair . . . . . . . . . 3
Advanced Propulsion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Aerobatics and Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Aerodynamics and Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Aeroelasticity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Aeronautical Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Aerospace Industry in the United States . . . . . . . 30
Ailerons, Flaps, and Airplane Wings. . . . . . . . . . . 37
Air Flight Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Air Transportation Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Aircraft Icing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Airfoils. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Airplane Accident Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Airplane Cockpit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Airplane Guidance Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Airplane Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Airplane Manufacturers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Airplane Propellers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Airplane Radar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Airplane Safety Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Animal Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Neil Armstrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Atmospheric Circulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Autogyros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Autopilot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Aviation and Energy Consumption. . . . . . . . . . . 109
Avionics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Avro Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Daniel Bernoulli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Biplanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Blimps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Boomerangs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Richard Branson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Conservation of Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Contrails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Glenn H. Curtiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Leonardo da Vinci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
DC Plane Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Differential Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Dirigibles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Jimmy Doolittle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Amelia Earhart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). . . . . . . . 173
First Airplane Flight across the English Channel. . 178
First Cross-Channel Balloon Flight . . . . . . . . . . 182
First Flights of Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
First Manned Balloon Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Flight Altitude. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Flight Balloons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Flight Control Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Flight Instrumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Flight Landing Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Flight Propulsion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Flight Recorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Flight Roll and Pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Flight Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Flight Simulators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Flight Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Fluid Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Flying Wing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Forces of Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Steve Fossett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Yuri Gagarin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
German Luftwaffe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
John Glenn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Glider Planes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Robert H. Goddard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Gravity and Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Greenhouse Gases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Heavier-than-air Craft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Helicopters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
High-altitude Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
High-speed Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Hindenburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
History of Human Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Homebuilt and Experimental Aircraft . . . . . . . . 307
Hot-Air Balloons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Howard R. Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
v
Contents
Human-Powered Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Hypersonic Aircraft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Jet Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Johnson Space Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Landing Gear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Lighter-Than-Air Craft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Otto Lilienthal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Charles A. Lindbergh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Ernst Mach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Mach Number. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Materials Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Messerschmitt Aircraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Military Aircraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Billy Mitchell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Model Airplanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Monoplanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Montgolfier Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) . . 398
Sir Isaac Newton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Paper Airplanes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Parachutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Plane Rudders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Wiley Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Pressure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Propulsion Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Ramjets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Eddie Rickenbacker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Rocket Propulsion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Rockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Rotorcraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Russian Space Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
Burt Rutan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
Scramjet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Alan Shepard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
Shock Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Igor Sikorsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Sound Barrier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
vi
Principles of Aeronautics
Space Shuttle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Spacecraft Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Spaceflight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
Stabilizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Stealth Bomber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Supersonic Aircraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Supersonic Jetliners and Commercial Airfare . . 498
Supersonic Jets Invented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
Tail Designs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
Takeoff Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
Taxiing Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
Temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
Valentina Tereshkova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
Training and Education of Pilots . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
Triplanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
Turbojets and Turbofans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
Turboprops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
Types and Structure of Airplanes . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Ultralight Aircraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) . . . . . . . 548
Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) . . . . . . . . . . 553
Jules Verne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
Viscosity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
Manfred von Richthofen (Red Baron) . . . . . . . . 564
Wake Turbulence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
Weather Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
Wind Shear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
Wind Tunnels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
Wing Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
Women and Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
Wright Brothers’ First Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Wright Flyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
X-Planes (X-1 to X-45) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
Chuck Yeager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647
 Publisher’s Note
Aeronautics is the next volume in Salem’s Principles of
Science series, which includes Microbiology, Energy,
Marine Science, Geology, Information Technology, and
Fire Science.
This new resource explores the art and science of
flight. Readers will gain a solid grounding in the his-
tory of flight, major events and individuals associ-
ated with flying, and the physics that makes flight
possible.
This work begins with a comprehensive Editor’s
Introduction to the topic written by Richard M.
Renneboog, M.Sc.
Following the Introduction, Principles of Aeronautics
includes 155 entries that follow a convenient alpha-
betical arrangement, making subjects easy to locate.
From the earliest legends and cave carvings of hu-
man flight to the most recent composite materials for
airplanes and rockets, this volume takes readers on a
journey through the world-altering discoveries, and
at times harrowing tragedies, of humanity’s deter-
mined effort to unlock the secrets of flying. Covering
all types of aircraft—from balloons and dirigibles to
modern airplanes and space vehicles— Principles of
Aeronautics delves into the scientific discoveries that
enabled progress in mechanized flight as well as fa-
mous firsts, human-powered flight, flight engines and
other components, the environmental impact of
flight, and women pilots, to name a few topics.
Entries begin by specifying related Fields of Study,
followed by an Abstract and then a list of Key Con-
cepts summarizing important points; all entries end
with a helpful Further Reading section. Numerous
photographs and illustrations throughout enhance
the categories.
This work also includes helpful appendices, in-
cluding:
• Bibliography;
• Glossary;
• Organizations;
• Subject Index
Salem Press extends appreciation to all involved in
the development and production of this work.
Names and affiliations of contributors to this work
follow the Editor’s Introduction.
Principles of Aeronautics, as well as all Salem Press
reference books, is available in print and as an
e-book. Please visit www.salempress.com for more
information.
vii
 Introduction
Flight has truly been the dream of humanity for as
long as humanity has had dreams. Few people have
not awakened from sleep recalling a dream of flying
or floating freely through the air. Ancient peoples
watched the birds flying effortlessly or soaring high
up in the sky. Perhaps they wondered how birds flew,
and divined that their wings were the key to flight.
The ancient Greek legend of renowned architect
and builder Daedalus and his son Icarus certainly
suggests this. The pair were imprisoned by the king
of Minos, who had contracted their services, so that
no one could learn the secrets of his castle from
them. Daedalus observed the seabirds that flew and
soared about the castle, and he set about collecting
the feathers that fell from them occasionally. Using
wax left over from his construction efforts, Daedalus
used it to fashion feathered wings for himself and
for Icarus. Daedalus and Icarus used these wings to
escape from their imprisonment, but Icarus is said
to have flown too close to the sun, melting his wings,
and he plummeted to his death in the sea.
Of course, it is impossible for any human to fly like
a bird with a pair of artificial wings, so if there is a
grain of truth in the story of Daedalus and Icarus,
perhaps it is this: Daedalus could easily have per-
ceived that the wings of birds have a peculiar
cross-sectional shape that we understand as an airfoil.
He may also have observed that birds rise in the air
when they sweep their wings forward and not when
they flap them backwards. The backwards sweep gives
the birds forward movement but not upward move-
ment. He would certainly have observed that birds re-
main aloft when soaring with outstretched wings by
using rising air currents to push them upward. Move-
ment of air over the airfoil shape of an outstretched
wing splits the air in such a way that the air flowing
over the upper surface increases in speed, which de-
creases the pressure above the wing. Air flowing
across the lower surface of the wing is therefore of
higher pressure and acts to provide an upward force
against the wing (this is known as lift).
With this observation of bird flight, Daedalus
could have reasoned that he and Icarus could use
their properly shaped wings to glide like birds,
rather than with the ornithoptic motion of flapping
wings. Did Icarus the fly too close to the Sun? Or
did he just glide too long in direct sunlight when the
clouds parted rather than in their shade, thus allow-
ing the wax of his wings to soften and his wings to
fail? It is an old story of unknowable age, and there
is even debate among scholars as to whether or not
Daedalus and Icarus were actual persons.
The consensus is that it took many centuries be-
fore the ability for controlled flight in mechanical
devices became reality. But did it? Stories thousands
of years old, primitive carvings, and ancient legends
from all over the world and from all civilizations de-
pict people using flying machines. Renaissance
paintings and ancient rock carvings alike show what
today would be described as UFOs or other flying
machines. An ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic carving
clearly depicts what looks for all the world like a
modern helicopter and airplane among star sym-
bols. Sacred scriptures tell of airborne vehicles
termed "a wheel within a wheel" in the Bible, while
Hindu texts thousands of years old speak of flying
machines called vimana. While these stories and in-
terpretations are suspect in the jaundiced eye of the
present day, they were held as absolute truth in their
original times.
In our original time—the present day—people do
fly using flying machines, a technology that began in
earnest early in the twentieth century when the
Wright brothers made the first powered flight in a
heavier-than-air vehicle. This was founded on their
study and development of gliders and kites. A kite
simply demonstrates that moving air has the ability
to support objects that are much heavier than air.
The force of moving air is undeniable, but gliding is
not flying so much as just slowly falling over a dis-
tance. Based on the aerodynamic principles they
learned as part of their experience with gliders and
ix
Introduction
kites, the Wright brothers realized that an engine
driving a propeller or fan of some kind should be
able to make their steerable glider fly farther than it
could as an unpowered vehicle. Over the next mere
fifty years, powered flight progressed from the
Wrights' crude bi-winged powered glider to powered
spaceflight, and after fifty more years it promises to
carry humanity to other planets. Within those two
half centuries an almost unbelievable amount of
technical brilliance, ingenuity, and hard work
brought about incredible changes.
The Wrights understood that powered flight re-
quires a means of propulsion, and they solved that
issue by constructing an engine of their own design
that would be light enough to be carried as an inte-
gral part of their flying machine. Their engine was a
small internal combustion engine that could turn a
propeller to provide the thrust to push the machine
along through the air. As engine technology ad-
vanced, so too did the power for propulsion of air-
craft. Ever more powerful engines could drive larger
and faster aircraft, although the technology was still
fairly primitive. Two world wars in the twentieth cen-
tury played a large role in the development of air-
craft. At the beginning of World War I, aircraft were
not a considered part of the war effort on either
side. The flying machines were little better than the
Wright Flyer, and many in fact were built in Wright
factories. But aircraft quickly proved valuable in a
number of service roles, especially in spotting troop
positions and movements, and far more effective
than the balloons that were being used for that
purpose.
This led to a push to develop better aircraft that
would be more capable of combat roles. Throughout
World War I essentially the only aircraft were bi-
planes, relatively slow but quick to respond and
highly maneuverable. Monoplane designs were also
available, but these were not favored by either pilots
or military leaders due to their poor performance.
The monoplane airframe didn't come into its own
until after World War I, as available engines, and
hence propulsion, exceeded the ability of biplanes to
support their power. At the same time, the aerody-
x
Principles of Aeronautics
namic forces of lift, drag, and thrust became increas-
ingly important for aircraft flying at speed through
the air. The strut-and-brace construction of biplanes
became a hindrance in regard to both strength of the
materials being used and in terms of aerodynamic
drag. The only way to improve flyability was to go to
the monoplane design and optimize the design of
wings as airfoils using Bernoulli's principle.
When an airfoil moves through air, its leading
edge splits the airflow, directing some of it to pass
over the top surface of the airfoil and the rest to
pass over the lower surface of the airfoil. According
to the Coanda effect, the flow of a fluid in contact
with a curved surface will follow the contour of the
curved surface, in effect sticking to it as it flows past.
Thus, the respective airflows passing over an airfoil
closely follow the curved surfaces of the airfoil. The
airfoil shape allows the two airflows to reunite as
they leave the trailing edge of the airfoil. In between
the leading and trailing edges, the upper surface is
given a higher profile than the lower surface.
Bernoulli's principle affects the two airflows in a spe-
cific way, such that the flow of air over the upper
surface of the airfoil increases in speed and reduces
in pressure relative to the airflow across the lower
surface of the airfoil. This difference in pressure is
the source of the lift force an aircraft experiences as
it moves through the air. The lift force is also di-
rectly related to the speed at which the airfoil moves
through the air, as determined by the thrust force of
propulsion.
From the end of World War I in 1918, and over
the next twenty-five years, aircraft design and aero-
nautical engineering maximized the efficiency of
thrust and lift to produce propeller-driven aircraft
capable of exceeding 800 kilometers per hour. But
at those speeds, some parts of an airplane, such as a
wing tip or the tips of propeller blades, can exceed
the speed of sound. The shock waves this produces
caused more than one aircraft to lose lift and fall
into an unrecoverable dive. As this phenomenon
came to be understood, the speed of sound came to
be seen as a speed no aircraft should or could
achieve: the sound barrier.
Principles of Aeronautics
In the middle of World War II, a new means of
propulsion was applied to aircraft; the jet engine. In
a typical internal combustion engine, power is gen-
erated by repeated individual explosions of fuel
within individual combustion cylinders. These drive
pistons connected to a common rotating shaft that
turns a propeller. This repetitive operation requires
a relatively large number of moving parts and pro-
duces a steady vibration against the airframe. But in
a jet engine, the combustion of fuel is a continuous
process, producing a steady flow of rapidly expand-
ing hot gases from the engine's combustion cham-
ber, or combustor, and out the exhaust vent, provid-
ing thrust directly. This is very similar to the manner
in which thrust is developed in a rocket engine, al-
though there are many structural differences be-
tween them. Since the 1950s, most commercial and
military aircraft have been powered by jet engines or
turbine engines, even propeller-driven airplanes
and rotorcraft.
As World War II neared its end in Europe, the
German war effort produce two rocket-propelled
weapons, the V-1 "buzz bomb" and the V-2 ballistic
rocket. The V-1, launched from the German base at
Peenemunde, was powered by periodic firing of fuel
in a combustion chamber rather than by a continu-
ous flow combustion of fuel. The periodic popping
sound from its exhaust as it approached its target
gave rise to the name of "buzz bomb," and the sud-
den cessation of that sound as the engine shut off
was the signal for anyone within earshot to seek
shelter. The V-2, on the other hand, flew silently.
Once launched, it flew on a ballistic trajectory,
reaching the peak of that trajectory under powered
flight. It then completed its ballistic arc in free fall.
People in the target area had no warning sound of
its approach. When World War II was over, the V-2
became the foundation of the so-called "Space Race"
and the forerunner of all rockets that came after.
The fundamental difference between a jet engine
and a rocket is simple. Jet engines are supplied with
fuel from an external reservoir, but a rocket's fuel is
carried with it as an integral part of the rocket's
structure. How the fuel is handled and combusted is
Introduction
very different from jet engine to rocket, but the
thrust of both is produced and utilized in an essen-
tially identical manner: hot, rapidly expanding
gases press against the inside of the combustor and
exit through the exhaust, and the vehicle moves in
accordance with Newton's law of action and reaction.
There is also the law of conservation of momentum
at work in both types of engine. Accordingly, the
fundamental physics is fairly basic. It is the technical
engineering to harness the physics that is the star of
the show.
Aeronautics is a many-faceted gem of human en-
deavor. In the eighteenth century, the Montgolfier
brothers observed heavier-than-air objects being
lifted up by a rising column of smoke in a fireplace.
This gave them the idea that given a large enough
container with which to capture the hot air, it might
be possible to create something that could carry a
person into the air. The first hot-air balloon flight
took place not long after, and it was proven beyond
a doubt that people could fly in this manner. The
discovery of "flammable air," which we know as hy-
drogen gas, and later of helium provided another
means of flight. Encased in a suitably large "bag"
containing such a gas, flight could last indefinitely
without the need to keep a fire lit under a bag,
which created a fire hazard. Adding a motor and
propellers to such a vehicle resulted in the dirigible
(dirigible is a French word meaning directable or
steerable, from the verb diriger, to direct or steer).
The dirigible was huge, slower than any contempo-
rary airplane, and remarkably stable in even the
worst weather. They became one of the first major
weapons of war, but this combination of qualities
proved to be their downfall. Bags of gas, even those
with a supporting structure, can be beaten and
folded by a sufficiently strong wind, and their rela-
tive slowness made them very easy and big targets
for both air and ground fired guns. The airplane
was the way to go.
In modern aeronautical applications, materials
science plays a very important role for both aircraft
and spacecraft. Wood, cloth, and paper gave way to
lighter silk and nylon fabric for balloons and thin
xi
Introduction
aluminum sheet metal for airplanes. Metals gave
way to plastics for some components, and metals
have been replaced by advanced composite materi-
als in many cases. Advanced composites are recent
products, children of the age of polymers. Materials
such as polyaramid (Kevlar) and carbon fiber are
lighter and stronger than the metals they replace,
and they can be formed in any desired shape. Al-
most all modern aircraft are at least in part con-
structed of advanced composite materials, from the
light panel doors inside an airliner to the rock-hard
material of fighter plane wings. In space, the
Canadarm used in the NASA space shuttles for ma-
terial manipulation are constructed of carbon fiber.
As one would expect, working with such materials
requires special training. The aeronautical engineer
has to add "chemist" to the list of expertise required.
In the air, all of these things are under the control of
the pilot, and they must function flawlessly if cata-
strophic failures are to be avoided. The pilot has to
trust that the aircraft is as it should be, that the
ground crews have done their job, that the materials
that make up the aircraft are sound, and that the
many instruments provided to monitor the aircraft
xii
Principles of Aeronautics
and guide the pilot are trustworthy. The job of a
pilot, the heart of the air transportation industry, is
awe-inspiring, and it comes with heavy
responsibility.
In this volume we have tried to present a very
brief accounting of the various aspects of aeronau-
tics, such as the minutiae of airfoil design, the his-
tory of aeronautics, biographical information of a
selection of key historical figures, engine design,
and aerospace applications. Each of the articles pre-
sented herein has been augmented with a set of re-
cent references for further reading, by authors from
many parts of the world, all of whom are intimately
involved with the world of aeronautics. Various
terms and concepts are defined and described at the
beginning of each article to assist the reader in un-
derstanding the content and context of that particu-
lar article, and a glossary of terms is included as an
appendix. Understandably, these articles are no
more than brief introductions to the topics they ad-
dress, and it is my hope that they provide an open
door to learning more about aeronautics.
—Richard M. Renneboog
 Contributors

Richard Adler James S. Douglas

University of Michigan, Dearborn Independent Scholar

R. Kurt Barnhart Robert P. Ellis

Independent Scholar Northborough Historical Society

Maryanne Barsotti Victoria Erhart

Warren, MI Strayer University

Wendy S. Beckman Thomas R. Feller

Independent Scholar Nashville, TN

Raymond D. Benge Jr. David G. Fisher

Tarrant County College Independent Scholar

Alvin K. Benson Richard D. Fitzgerald

Brigham Young University Onondage Community College

Kenneth H. Brown George J. Flynn

Northwestern Oklahoma State University SUNY-Plattsburgh

Douglas Campbell David E. Fogleman

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Roger V. Carlson Alan S. Frazier

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Independent Scholar

P. John Carter John C. Fredriksen

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Frederick B. Chary Yautia Fu

Indiana University Northwest Independent Scholar

Monish R. Chatterjee Angel G. Fuentes

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Joseph F. Clark III K. Fred Gillum

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Douglas Clouatre Gina Hagler

Mid Plains Community College Rare Math

Veronica T. Cote Niles R. Holt

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Rafael de la Llave W. N. Hubin

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

xiii
Contributors Principles of Aeronautics

Thomas Inman Chad T. Lower

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Jamey D. Jacob James F. Marchman III

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

John C. Johnson Robert Maxant

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Douglas R. Jordan Bernard Mergen

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Maureen Kamph Matthew G. McCoy

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Lori Kaye Dana P. McDermott

Independent Scholar Chicago, IL

David Kasserman Randall L. Millstein

Rowan University Independent Scholar

Narayanan M. Komerath Eugene E. Niemi Jr.

Georgia Institute of Technology Independent Scholar

Lillian D. Kozloski Cynthia Clark Northrup

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Donald L. Kunz Jani Macari Pallis

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Jack Lasky Robert J. Paradowski

Northeast Editing Rochester Institute of Technology

M. Lee Shari Parsons

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Denyse Lemaire John R. Phillips

Independent Scholar Purdue University, Calumet

Rowan University George R. Plitnik

Independent Scholar Frostburg State University

Manja Leyk Steven J. Ramold

Independent Scholar Eastern Michigan University

Josué Njock Libii P. S. Ramsey

Purdue University Highland, MI

M. A. K. Lodhi Frank J. Regan

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

John L. Loth Richard M. Renneboog

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

xiv
Principles of Aeronautics Contributors

R. Smith Reynolds Sonia Sorrell

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Charles W. Rogers Polly D. Steenhagen

Southwestern Oklahoma State University Independent Scholar

Beatriz Martínez Romera Cynthia J. W. Svoboda

Independent Scholar Bridgewater State University

Alison Rowley Gregory S. Taylor

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Frank A. Salamone Lance Wayne Traub

Iona College Independent Scholar

Mary Fackler Schiavo Mary Ann Turney

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Richard Sheposh Janine Ungvarsky

Northeast Editing Musicare Project NEPA

R. Baird Shuman Robert J. Wells

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Independent Scholar

Sanford S. Singer David R. Wilkerson

Independent Scholar Independent Scholar

Billy R. Smith Jr.

Independent Scholar

xv

Advanced Composite Materials
in Aeronautical Engineering
Fields of Study: Physics; Chemistry; Aeronautical
engineering; Mechanical engineering; Materials
science; Mathematics
ABSTRACT
Advanced composites are specialty materials used in air-
craft manufacture and other applications for their unique
structural properties and strengths. Composite materials
and composite structural components have been known in
a wide variety of applications for literally thousands of
years. However, advanced composite materials are a very
recent invention that has existed for less than a century.
KEY CONCEPTS
lay-up: the process of assembling a composite stack
according to design parameters
thermosetting resin: a mixture of resinous chemicals
that undergoes polymerization when heated,
forming a solid product that cannot be melted
(thermoplastic polymers soften and melt when
heated)
warp clock: a simple guide diagram that shows the
angles at which fabrics are to be aligned when
constructing a composite stack
WHAT ARE ADVANCED COMPOSITE
MATERIALS?
Advanced composites are specialty materials used in
aircraft manufacture and other applications for their
unique structural properties and strengths. Compos-
ite materials and composite structural components
have been known in a wide variety of applications for
A
literally thousands of years. However, advanced com-
posite materials are a very recent invention that has
existed for less than a century. They are very much a
product of the age of plastics. Advanced composite
materials in aeronautical applications are carefully
constructed and processed in order to create a prod-
uct of a desired shape, such as an aircraft wing, fuse-
lage part, a hatch cover and other such pieces of a
functioning aircraft. The process requires the di-
rected assembly of stacked layers of special fabric that
are impregnated with a thermosetting resin. This raw
structure is then heated under reduced pressure to
solidify the stack into a rock-hard structure. Essen-
tially any desired shape can be formed in this way,
from small parts to entire aircraft bodies.
Every advanced composite consists of a substrate
embedded or encased within a matrix. These are the
fabrics and resins that are combined to be consoli-
dated into the final structure. There is a broad vari-
ety of fabric materials that can be utilized in con-
structing a composite material. Many are familiar,
with the simplest fabric called glass fiber, which can
be had in numerous forms raging from single strand
called “rovings” to complex multistrand weaves. in
actuality, any kind of cloth fiber can be used as the
substrate material for a composite structure—cotton,
nylon, wool, hemp, linen, etc. However, advanced
composite materials demand fibers of a more sub-
stantial nature than common fabrics. Accordingly,
glass fibers are the minimum strength fibers used in
advanced composites. All other fibers used have
higher and different strength factors. Polyaramid fi-
bers, commonly called Kevlar, have very high tensile
strength. Carbon fibers are extremely strong and
light, and can be readily consolidated into a
1
Advanced Composite Materials in Aeronautical Engineering
rock-hard material. Boron fiber is much less flexible
than carbon fiber, and produces composite struc-
tures with high rigidity and stiffness. Another type of
fiber that has yet to see broad application in aero-
nautic applications is similar to glass fiber, but it is
produced from basalt, the volcanic rock. Accord-
ingly, there are weight considerations when glass or
basalt fiber are used.
The matrix materials used in advanced compos-
ites are by far the most versatile of materials, by vir-
tue of the fact that they are polymers. Polymeric
compounds can be tailored to suit various purposes,
making them ideal for use in aerospace applications.
One “glaring” exception is the composite material
called Glare, a composite of glass fiber sandwiched
within thin bonded sheets of aluminum. In many
cases, the actual composition of a particular matrix
material and the conditions under which it is to be
processed into a final composite structure are
well-guarded proprietary secrets.
CONSTRUCTING AN ADVANCED COMPOSITE
STRUCTURE
Preparation of a composite structure of any kind is a
meticulous process. It begins with planning the
choice and lay-up of fabrics according to the de-
signed strength requirements of the finished prod-
uct. The fabric and its lay-up are engineered to pro-
duce a specific strength in the final product. That
strength derives from the designed relative orienta-
tions of the fabric fibers after the fabric stack has
been consolidated. Arranging the stack requires con-
sideration of the type of weave in the fabric and the
direction of the fibers in successive layers of fabric.
Woven fabrics may have a cross-sectional profile of
ridges and hollows that must be made to nest into
each other upon consolidation of the stack. Direc-
tional orientation of the fibers is arranged according
to a “warp clock,” a guide for orienting the layers of
fabric. The warp clock directs fabric orientations at
different relative angles so that the fabric fibers do
2
Principles of Aeronautics
not all run in the same direction. This is required to
prevent the structure from warping or twisting after
it has been processed.
With the fabric set, the stack is infused with ma-
trix resin and placed under reduced pressure so that
the resin and fabric are compressed and consoli-
dated into a single mass. At the same time, gases
that are evolved in the polymerization reactions as
the resin cures are withdrawn and eliminated. De-
pending on the nature of the resin, a controlled
heating program may be used to drive the curing
process to completion. When construction of the
product is complete, the product is tested for struc-
tural integrity and the proper dimensions, and if it
is sound the product can be put into service.
For large objects, the product is typically formed
on a mold and processed in a large, pressurized
oven, or autoclave. This is a very important step, re-
quiring the material of the mold to have the same
coefficient of thermal expansion as the composite
material being formed on the mold. Why is this so
important? The composite structure being formed
has to conform to precise dimensions, according to
its design parameters. During the curing process,
the composite material expands on being heated,
but when the finished product cools down it must re-
cover its intended dimensions. If the mold does not
correspond throughout the entire process, it will
force the composite structure to incorrect dimen-
sions or even to internal damage caused by differen-
tial expansion and shrinkage of the mold and the
structure on it. Delaminations may occur within the
structure, which would be the ruination of the
workpiece, as well as the loss of a significant invest-
ment in time and materials.
—Richard M. Renneboog
Further Reading
Armstrong, Keith, William Cole, Eric Chesman, and
Francois Museux. Care and Repair of Advanced Composites.
SAE International, 2020.
Principles of Aeronautics
Bafekrpour, Ehsan. Advanced Composite Materials: Properties
and Applications. De Gruyter Open, 2017.
Dai, Pin Qiang, Wen Zhe Chen, Xing Jun Liu, Yong Lu
Chen, and Zheng Yi Jiang. Advanced Composite Materials.
Trans Tech Publications Ltd., 2012.
Fangueiro, Raul, and Sohel Rana. Advanced Composite
Materials for Aerospace Engineering: Processing, Properties
and Applications. Elsevier Science, 2016.
Mazlan, Norkhairunnisa, S. M. Sapuan, and R. A. Ilyas,
editors. Advanced Composites in Aerospace Engineering
Applications. Springer Nature, 2022.
Tiwari, Ashutosh, Mohammad Rabia Alenezi, and Seong
Chan Jun, editors. Advanced Composite Materials. John
Wiley & Sons, 2016.
See also: Advanced composite materials repair; Aerody-
namics and flight; Aeronautical engineering; Air transpor-
tation industry; Airplane accident investigation; Airplane
maintenance; Fluid dynamics; Materials science; Pressure;
Spacecraft engineering; Viscosity
Advanced Composite Materials
Repair
Fields of Study: Physics; Aeronautical engineering;
Mechanical engineering; Chemistry; Mathematics
ABSTRACT
Composite material structures are carefully assembled com-
binations of layers of fabric embedded in a matrix of cured
polymer resin. The method of their fabrication produces
materials of exceptional strength and precise dimensions.
But the very thing that provides their strength can also be
the source of their greatest weakness.
KEY CONCEPTS
delamination: a separation of the layers of material
within the body of a composite structure
lay-up: the process of assembling a composite stack
according to design parameters
void: an opening or hole within the body of a com-
posite structure
Advanced Composite Materials Repair
warp clock: a simple guide diagram that shows the
angles at which fabrics are to be aligned when
constructing a composite stack
Composite material structures are carefully assem-
bled combinations of layers of fabric embedded in a
matrix of cured polymer resin. The method of their
fabrication produces materials of exceptional
strength and precise dimensions. But the very thing
that provides their strength can also be the source of
their greatest weakness. In the finished product, the
layers of fabric must be completely and permanently
bonded to each other within their encompassing
matrix. This adhesion is the functional aspect that
provides the strength of the material. It must be so
complete that the many individual components and
the matrix amalgamate into one solid material. Fail-
ure to achieve this completely makes it inevitable
that conditions will exist that could lead to the fail-
ure of the material at a critical moment.
VOIDS
During the consolidation and curing process, the
polymerization reactions proceeding within the ma-
trix resin produce by-product gases such as water va-
por and hydrogen chloride that must be removed
completely. This is achieved by consolidating the
resin and fabric stack under vacuum, using the pres-
sure of the atmosphere or the increased pressure in-
side an autoclave to provide a uniform compressive
force. It can, and does, happen that a bubble of
by-product gases gets trapped and is unable to be
extracted by the vacuum pump being used. It can
also happen that the resin does not penetrate the
fabric stack uniformly, preventing the necessary ad-
hesion in a particular part of the composite stack. In
such cases an empty spot or void remains in the in-
terior of the finished product. These are points of
weakness and potential failure of the structure in
use. Given that an aircraft may go from a ground-
level temperature of 40ºC or more to a temperature
3
Advanced Composite Materials Repair
at altitude of -40ºC or even colder, the gases
trapped in an existing void will respond according
to the gas laws relating temperature and pressure.
The change in pressure associated with such temper-
ature changes can be sufficient to collapse the com-
posite structure surrounding the void or to increase
the size of the void, and perhaps fracture off a sec-
tion of the surrounding composite. Under load, such
as the stress experienced by an aircraft in flight,
voids can initiate fracturing in the surrounding com-
posite material that may quickly progress and end in
catastrophic failure. It is an essential practice that
voids be found through various nondestructive test-
ing methods, and then be corrected or repaired by
trained and qualified advanced composites repair
specialists.
DELAMINATIONS
A composite material is produced by laminating lay-
ers of fabric together, then consolidating them
within a resin matrix. Delaminations occur when the
layers of fabric within a composite material come
apart from each other without forming a void. This
represents the loss of the structural integrity of the
composite with concomitant loss of material
strength. Delaminations may be considerably larger
in area than the area encompassed by a void. The
effect of a delamination may be compared to a brick
wall in which the bricks in a portion of the wall are
sponges instead of bricks. This is where the brick
wall, and by analogy the composite with a
delamination, will fail. Testing for delaminations is
carried out in the same manner as testing for voids.
PHYSICAL DAMAGE
In functioning aircraft assemblies, composite materi-
als may be subjected to a variety of events that can
result in physical damage requiring repair. Impact
damage can result from such things as hailstones,
bird strikes, lightning strikes, severe turbulence, bul-
let strikes during military operations, and any num-
4
Principles of Aeronautics
ber of other impact events. Chemical damage can
occur as a result of hydraulic line failure, fuel leaks
and cargo leaks that may occur, allowing the fluid to
contact and infiltrate the composite material. Even a
situation in which two materials having different
electrical potentials come into contact with each
other in some way can cause extensive and expen-
sive physical damage. For example, carbon fiber in a
composite material becoming connected in some
way to aluminum components either by direct con-
tact or by an indirect connection such as bolts,
screws or rivets will result in severe damage as the
electrical current resulting from the contact drives
oxidation and decomposition of the two materials.
In such cases, the damaged areas must be repaired
or even removed and replaced. This could, and has,
meant the complete gutting of an aircraft in order to
replace composite flooring panels.
TESTING METHODS
Testing of advanced composites to detect voids and
delaminations is done using nondestructive testing
(NDT) methods. The first method commonly used
to quickly test for voids, delaminations and the ex-
tent of any internal damage is most often the simple
“tap test.” As the name suggests, this nondestructive
test is carried out simply by tapping lightly on the
surface of the structure with a small tapping ham-
mer that has a hard plastic head. The technique is
essentially the same as knocking on a wall inside a
house to locate a wall stud. The sound is different at
the wall stud compared to the deeper, more reso-
nant sound obtained from the empty space between
the wall studs. The sound that is obtained by tap-
ping on a structurally sound composite is very differ-
ent from the sound produced by tapping on a spot
where a void or a delamination exists. Similarly, an
area that has been damaged will generally have in-
ternal damage radiating outward from the location
of the visible damage. This too will produce a differ-
ent sound in a tap test. A trained and experienced
Principles of Aeronautics
composites technician can often reliably identify and
isolate the area to be repaired just by using the tap
test.
A more reliable test method is to couple tap test-
ing with an electronic acoustic analyzer. The high
sensitivity of the acoustic analyzer provides a much
more accurate depiction of the extent of the damage
to be repaired, and can also generate a hard-copy
printout of the area, like an ultrasound image. This
higher sensitivity to sound vibrations can detect
sound differences that the technician would be un-
able to hear, thus revealing the true extent of the
damage.
Electronic methods of NDT have supplanted the
tap test in most situations, particularly due to the
advances in electronics technology. Electronic de-
vices such as ultrasound, infrared reflectance, X-ray
and similar test devices can now be made small
enough that they have become portable “shop tools”
that facilitate damage analysis in composite struc-
tures. The technology is now able to allow a trained
technician to capture a detailed three-dimensional
rendering of damage to the interior of a composite
structure.
TRAINING SCHOOLS
All composite repairs, especially in regard to air-
craft, require a specially trained and qualified tech-
nician. Because this is relevant to the air transport
industry and the safety of people who fly in those
aircraft, there are very stringent regulations and
mandates regarding aircraft composite repair, from
all of the Federal Aviation Association, Transport
Canada, and other national agencies responsible for
governance of air transport. Just as air flight com-
munication has been globally standardized to the
English language, composite repair in the aircraft
industry has been standardized with regard to regu-
latory governance. All technicians must be trained
and certified to the same standard in order to work
as composite repair technicians in aerospace, espe-
Advanced Composite Materials Repair
cially with regard to commercial air transport. Ac-
cordingly, there are a number of training schools
that have been established for the purpose of train-
ing aircraft technicians, and others, in the intricacies
of advanced composite repair. Some, such as Renais-
sance Aeronautics Associates (RAA), in London, On-
tario, Canada, and Abaris Training, in Reno, Ne-
vada, are privately owned and operated, and serve a
worldwide clientele. Large manufacturers such as
Boeing and Airbus provide their own training, often
as protection for proprietary materials. But all train-
ing schools must provide training to the same regu-
lated standards. The training includes comprehen-
sive instruction in the construction and properties of
advanced composites, and the methods of repair of
advanced composites. The most recent advances in
training include computer numerical control (CNC)
composites milling and virtual reality repair demon-
stration, used at RAA and other schools.
REPAIR TECHNIQUES
When a repair is to be made and the area of the re-
pair has been identified, the first step in the repair is
to excise the damaged area so the repair can pro-
ceed. If the damage is severe enough, it is generally
expedient to simply cut out the damaged area and
rebuild the missing composite according to its de-
sign standards. This may actually involve replacing
the damaged part entirely rather than making a
spot repair. For lesser damage it may only be neces-
sary to remove the layers that have actually sus-
tained damage. These are typically scarfed out with
air-powered grinders and other tools to create an
open area within which the composite will be recon-
structed. The reconstruction is not simply a “patch
job.” The goal is to have a finished repair that meets
all of the original design parameters. This means
laying in the same fabric layers in the same pre-
scribed relative orientations as in the original de-
sign, infusing them with the appropriate resin, and
curing with heat under reduced pressure. The repair
5
Advanced Propulsion
is then tested for integrity, and if it can be certified
sound the aircraft can be declared airworthy and put
back into service. Such repairs are always fully docu-
mented in the aircraft’s service record, and this re-
cord can be invaluable if an accident investigation
involving that aircraft is undertaken at some later
date.
Repair of larger components, such an aileron or
perhaps a fuselage panel, generally calls for its com-
plete removal and the perhaps manufacture of an
entirely new piece. Spot repairs can be cured in
place using portable equipment, but large parts will
be processed in a suitably large autoclave. These,
such as the autoclaves at Boeing and other large air-
craft manufacturing facilities, can be large enough
to contain an entire aircraft fuselage, although the
more usual loading consists of several smaller com-
ponents to be processed at the same time and under
the same conditions.
—Richard M. Renneboog
Further Reading
Armstrong, Keith, William Cole, Eric Chesman, and
Francois Museux. Care and Repair of Advanced Composites.
SAE International, 2020.
Fangueiro, Raul, and Sohel Rana. Advanced Composite
Materials for Aerospace Engineering: Processing, Properties
and Applications. Elsevier Science, 2016.
Jayakrishna, K., M. Rajesh, and Mohamed Thariq
Hameed Sultan. Repair of Advanced Composites for
Aerospace Applications. CRC Press, 2022.
Jefferson, Andrew J., V. Arumugarn, and Hom Nath
Dhakal. Repair of Polymer Composites: Methodology,
Techniques, and Challenges. Elsevier Science, 2018.
Meola, Carosena. Nondestructive Testing in Composite
Materials. MDPI AG, 2020.
Sierakowski, Robert L. Damage Tolerance in Advanced
Composites. CRC Press, 2018.
Zhong, Shuncong, and Walter Nsengiyumua.
Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation of Fiber-Reinforced
Composite Structures. Springer Singapore, 2022.
See also: Advanced composite materials in aeronautical
engineering; Aerodynamics and flight; Aeronautical engi-
6
Principles of Aeronautics
neering; Air transportation industry; Airplane accident
investigation; Airplane maintenance; Fluid dynamics; Ma-
terials science; Pressure; Spacecraft engineering; Viscosity
Advanced Propulsion
Fields of Study: Physics; Aeronautical engineering;
Mechanical engineering; Chemical engineering;
Mathematics
ABSTRACT
Advanced propulsion refers to any means for launching or
propelling spacecraft beyond the use of traditional chemical
rocket engines. If humanity is ever to explore the solar sys-
tem and access resources beyond Earth, cheaper, faster, and
more efficient propulsion systems must be developed.
KEY CONCEPTS
advanced: indicates a process or mechanism that
functions beyond the current standard levels of
performance
aerospike rocket engine: a rocket engine with an in-
verted structure such that the exhaust exits rear-
ward along the outside of the engine to provide
thrust rather than rearward from the inside of the
engine
resistojet: an engine that uses electrical resistance to
heat exhaust gases that provide thrust as they are
ejected
scramjet: an engine that uses its supersonic speed to
compress air for combustion of hydrogen; it has
no moving parts and must be launched from a su-
personic carrier before it can fly on its own
thrust: the force or pressure exerted by the exhaust
gases on the body of an aircraft in the direction of
its motion
THE FUNDAMENTALS
If the space shuttle’s external fuel tank were placed
on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, it would
Principles of Aeronautics
stand just taller than Lady Liberty’s torch. At
launch, the mass of the space shuttle is about 2,040
tonnes (4.5 million pounds), but it can deliver only
6.5 percent of that mass to low-Earth orbit, and
that costs $20,000 per kilogram ($9,100 per
pound). For comparison, in 2001, gold sold for
about $9,000 per kilogram. To achieve a stable
low-Earth orbit, the payload must simultaneously
be lifted about 300 kilometers above Earth’s sur-
face and accelerated to a horizontal speed of nearly
8 kilometers per second (about Mach 23, or
twenty-three times the speed of sound).
Space Shuttle Atlantis on a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. [Public domain.]
Advanced Propulsion
At 111 meters (364 feet), the Saturn V rocket that
took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon stood over
twice as tall as the space shuttle. In ascending to low-
Earth orbit, the Saturn’s first three stages burned for
a total of 11.5 minutes, using 75 terajoules (75 x 1012)
of chemical energy. That was about 1.5 percent of
all of the energy in the world produced from fossil
fuel during those 11.5 minutes. Only 6 percent of
that energy went into lifting and accelerating the
Apollo payload into orbit, while most of the remain-
ing 94 percent was expended on lifting and acceler-
ating the fuel used on the way up.
7
Advanced Propulsion
There are many plans for more efficient space-
craft. The Venture Star project featured the more ef-
ficient aerospike rocket engine. Solar sails, plasma
bubbles, gravitational slingshots, the Pegasus space-
craft, and laser- or microwave-launched spacecraft
are schemes that leave all or part of the main power
source behind and thereby reduce the spacecraft’s
mass. Scramjets gather part of their fuel, the oxi-
dizer, in flight, and the hypothetical Bussard inter-
stellar ramjet would gather fusion fuel in flight. Ion
drives, plasma drives, and drives using nuclear fis-
sion and fusion are all schemes to increase the ex-
haust velocity of the propellant.
AEROSPIKE ENGINES, SCRAMJETS, AND
PEGASUS
Worldwide, there are a number of projects under
way to develop a fully reusable launch vehicle that
will orbit payloads for one-tenth the cost of the
space shuttle. The X-33 “Venture Star” is a sleek,
wedge-shaped craft designed to take off vertically
like a rocket and glide to a landing like an airplane.
It pioneered the use of lightweight graphite compos-
ites in its structure and fuel tanks, and its efficient
lifting body shape allowed it to fly with only stubby
wings for stabilizers. Although many important tech-
nological advances were achieved, development
problems led to the withdrawal of support by the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) in March, 2001, but work continued on the
X-33’s Boeing Rocketdyne XRS-2200 aerospike en-
gines.
A conventional rocket engine has a combustion
chamber that opens into a bell-shaped nozzle. Fuel
and oxidizer are mixed and burned in this chamber,
and high-speed combustion products escape
through the nozzle. For greater efficiency, the pres-
sure of the exhaust plume should match the sur-
rounding air pressure. The aerospike nozzle is
V-shaped and is turned inside out: Fuel and oxidizer
are mixed in ten combustion chambers (five on each
8
Principles of Aeronautics
side of the V), and the exhaust plume sprays down
the outside of the V. Since the outside of the exhaust
plume is open to the atmosphere, it automatically
blooms outward until it matches the ambient pres-
sure, while the inside of the plume pushes against
the V and provides thrust.
A scramjet is a supersonic combustion ramjet.
Scramjets can be more efficient than rockets because
they use oxygen from the air and must carry only
the oxygen that they will use in space. A scramjet en-
gine has no moving parts; it uses its supersonic
speed (about Mach 10) and internal shape to com-
press air coming into its engine instead of using the
rotating compressor of a normal jet engine. Hydro-
gen fuel is injected into the airstream in the engine,
and the hot combustion gases (mostly water vapor)
escape from the rear of the engine to provide thrust.
A scramjet must be launched at supersonic speed be-
fore it can fly. In June, 2001, a B-52 aircraft lifted an
X-43A scramjet mounted on a Pegasus-based rocket
6,000 meters (20,000 feet) into the atmosphere and
launched the combination. The rocket was to accel-
erate to the scramjet’s cruising speed and then re-
lease it. Unfortunately, a structural failure occurred
shortly after rocket ignition and the mission was ter-
minated.
Several nations are working on scramjets. In Au-
gust, 2001, India announced plans to develop the
Avatar, a 25-metric-ton craft believed to be able to
cheaply carry a 1-metric-ton payload into a 100-kilo-
meter-high orbit. The Avatar will take off and land
like a conventional airliner using a combination of
turbofan, ramjet, and scramjet engines fueled with
hydrogen. A unique feature is that it is to cruise at
Mach 8 for an hour at an altitude of 10 kilometers
while it takes in and liquefies 21 metric tons of oxy-
gen before it uses a hydrogen-and-oxygen-fueled
rocket to push into space.
The Pegasus rocket has placed dozens of satellites
into orbit and is the most successful small commer-
cial launch vehicle in the world. The “Stargazer”
Principles of Aeronautics
Lockheed L-1101 aircraft carries Pegasus to a
launch point 12 kilometers high, above the densest
and most turbulent part of the atmosphere. The
three-stage rocket is then released and ignited. It
can carry a 450-kilogram payload into low-Earth or-
bit.
SOLAR SAILS AND PLASMA BUBBLES
The surface of the Sun is a fearsome place—a seeth-
ing, turbulent ocean of blinding incandescent gases,
incessantly rocked by sonic booms as gigantic gouts
of matter race upward through the photosphere.
The flood of energy from the Sun tears particles
from its outermost part, the solar corona, and con-
stantly drives this sun-stuff into space. This is the so-
lar wind: electrons along with ionized hydrogen and
helium atoms streaming outward at an average
speed of 400 kilometers per second.
Earth’s magnetosphere is the region surround-
ing the planet that is dominated by its own mag-
netic field, not the Sun’s. Geophysicist Robert
Winglee of the University of Washington realized
that the solar wind pushing against Earth’s mag-
netosphere pushes Earth away from the Sun, ex-
cept that Earth is far too heavy for this to produce
any measurable effect. However, Winglee proposed
that if a light spacecraft could generate a large
magnetic field, the solar wind would propel the
spacecraft. He calls this hypothesis Mini-
Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion, or M2P2.
Winglee and his colleagues suggest that a 200-ki-
logram spacecraft (including 50 kilograms of he-
lium) might be built around an electromagnet coil
powered by solar cells. Winglee’s group demon-
strated that injecting ionized helium into a coil’s
magnetic field forces the field to expand like a bub-
ble, becoming a mini-magnetosphere. They calcu-
late that in space this magnetosphere would be 15 to
20 kilometers in radius, and with the solar wind
pushing on it, the craft should reach speeds of 50 to
80 kilometers per second after three months. This is
Advanced Propulsion
ten times faster than the speeds previously reached
by chemical rockets. Such a craft could reach Saturn
in six months instead of the seven years required for
the Cassini mission.
The mini-magnetosphere is not really spherical.
Its shape depends upon its interaction with the solar
wind and on the parameters of the coil. To oversim-
plify, a mini-magnetosphere may be pictured as a
flat sheet of paper orbiting the Sun. If the sheet is
tilted so that its leading edge is closer to the Sun
than its trailing edge, solar wind particles bouncing
off of it will push it forward in its orbit and make it
go faster and spiral outward from the Sun. Con-
versely, if the trailing edge is closer to the Sun, solar
wind particles will slow it in its orbit, and the Sun’s
gravity will pull it inward. Since the magnetosphere
is practically without mass, it should be easy to ma-
neuver it by simply rotating the field-generating
coil.
The concept of propelling a craft with solar sails is
similar to M2P2, but these sails are propelled by
sunlight, not the solar wind. At the orbit of Earth,
the pressure of sunlight is about 9 newtons (2
pounds) per square kilometer. An 820-meter
square-rigged sail, named “the clipper” by its de-
signers, is expected to have a mass of about 2,000 ki-
lograms. Carrying a 2,000-kilogram payload, it
could travel from Earth to Mars or to the outer plan-
ets in about the same time, or less, than a chemical
rocket would require. Once solar sail technology is
achieved, its use would be cheaper than the use of
chemical rockets because it requires much less mass
to be lofted into Earth orbit for each mission. Solar
sails are also reusable. They can be returned to
Earth orbit, but their sunward speed is limited by
the relatively weak pull of solar gravity. Energy Sci-
ence Laboratories of San Diego, California, has de-
veloped a novel sail fabric, a very porous mesh of
carbon fibers. They have demonstrated that the fab-
ric is light enough to be pushed by laser light, and
that it can withstand temperatures of 2,500 degrees
9
Advanced Propulsion
Celsius. This is important because, someday, solar
sails may be given a push by shining a battery of
high-intensity lasers on them.
ELECTRIC PROPULSION
The thrust produced by a rocket depends upon how
much reaction mass is ejected per second, and how
fast it is ejected. Chemical rockets can deliver a large
amount of thrust because they can push out a great
deal of mass per second, but ejection speed is lim-
ited by the amount of energy released by the chemi-
cal reaction of fuel and oxidizer. Electric propulsion
engines typically deliver a small thrust with high ef-
ficiency since they can handle only a small amount
of mass per second, but they can eject it at very high
velocities. With a few exceptions, electric propulsion
has been commonly employed only in the thrusters
used by satellites for station keeping (staying where
they are supposed to be).
Resistojets use electric resistance to heat propel-
lent gases and thereby increase their ejection speed.
They have operated with ammonia, biowastes,
hydrazine, and hydrogen. Arcjets ignite an electric
arc in the propellant flowing through a rocket noz-
zle. Arcjets are twice as fuel efficient as chemical
thrusters, but ion engines are more efficient yet. The
480-kilogram spacecraft Deep Space 1 (DS-1) is pro-
pelled by an ion engine and powered by 2,400 watts
from solar arrays. Launched on October 24, 1998,
its mission was to test twelve new technologies, in-
cluding the ion drive and a relatively autonomous
navigation system. While DS-1 came within 26 kilo-
meters of asteroid Braille on July 28, 1999, prob-
lems kept it from obtaining any closeup images. Its
extended mission was to fly through the coma
(head) of comet Borrelly on September 22, 2001,
when it sampled the materials of the coma and pho-
tographed the comet’s nucleus.
DS-1’s ion engine uses xenon, a gas 4.5 times
heavier than air, for a propellent. Xenon in the en-
gine chamber is bombarded by electrons that ionize
10
Principles of Aeronautics
the xenon. The rear of the chamber is fitted with
two wire mesh screens; the first is positively charged,
while the second is negatively charged with up to
1,280 volts. Positive xenon atoms passing through
the first screen are accelerated to 28 kilometers per
second by the voltage on the second screen. The
ejection of these ions into space propels the craft
forward. Electrons sprayed into the exhaust stream
keep the craft from building up a static charge. Al-
though the engine exerts no more force than the
weight of a sheet or two of paper, its 82 kilograms of
xenon is enough for 6,000 hours of operation and
can increase DS-1’s speed by 4 kilometers per sec-
ond. It is ten times more efficient than a chemical
engine with the same weight of fuel.
NUCLEAR POWER
The great attraction for using nuclear power in
space is that nuclear reactions pack millions of times
more energy than chemical reactions. While the
United States placed a single nuclear reactor in
space in 1965, the former Soviet Union has used
small nuclear reactors to provide electrical power on
dozens of satellites. Both nations have used radioiso-
tope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that convert
the heat from radioactive decay directly into electric-
ity, but neither nation has used nuclear power for
propulsion. Since they have no moving parts and
are well constructed, RTGs are considered to be rel-
atively safe, but they are not very efficient. However,
using electricity from an RTG to power an ion en-
gine in the regions beyond Mars, where solar power
is weak, is an attractive possibility.
The Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applica-
tion (NERVA) was almost ready for flight testing
when the project was canceled in 1972. Under devel-
opment for a manned mission to Mars, the NERVA
engine heated hydrogen by passing it through the
reactor core and then expelled it from a rocket noz-
zle. Uranium carbide fuel elements were coated with
carbon and niobium to protect them from corrosion
Principles of Aeronautics
by the hydrogen propellent. The Mars craft would
be assembled in Earth orbit and, using nuclear en-
gines, it could travel to Mars, stay for two months,
and return to Earth in the space of about one year.
A program to develop a nuclear engine code-named
Timberwind began in the 1980s and continues un-
der the Space Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (SNTP)
Program. Fluidized bed reactors and other advanced
reactors that can operate at higher temperatures are
being studied since they should be more efficient
than the NERVA engine.
The most audacious nuclear engine is the nuclear
pulse rocket that was the basis of the Orion project,
which ended in 1965. The mass of the Orion vehicle
was a grandiose 585 tonnes. The rear of the vehicle
was connected by shock absorbers to a massive
pusher plate. Every few seconds, a small fission
bomb with a ten-ton yield was to be dropped out the
back end and exploded about 100 meters behind
Orion, so that the blast wave would drive Orion for-
ward. About 2,000 bombs would be required for a
250-day round trip to Mars. To prove the concept, a
small prototype was successfully launched from the
ground with tiny chemical bombs, but international
treaties now prohibit nuclear explosions in space,
and therefore the Orion project is unlikely to be re-
vived.
None of the proposed nuclear engines are very ef-
ficient at converting nuclear energy into a means of
propulsion, but they are still attractive because of
the large amount of energy in nuclear fuel. If the
rare artificial element americium-242m could be
produced in significant quantities, a much more effi-
cient engine might be constructed. The key is that a
thin film of americium-242m can sustain a chain re-
action. High-energy fission fragments escape from a
thin film and can be directed by magnets out the
rear of the craft to provide propulsion. A spacecraft
with such an engine might travel to Mars in two
weeks instead of the eight to ten months required by
chemical rockets.
Advanced Propulsion
TETHERS AND BOLOS
Tethers up to 20 kilometers long have already been
tested in space. A tether is a cable that can be un-
reeled from an orbiting craft such as the space shut-
tle. A mass on the far end of the tether will help
keep it stable. The tether may be deployed upward
by letting centrifugal force carry it farther from
Earth, or it may be deployed downward by letting
Earth’s gravity carry it down. If the tether includes a
conducting cable, it can be used to convert a satel-
lite’s momentum into electrical energy, since a con-
ductor moving in Earth’s magnetic field will act like
a generator. To keep a current flowing in the cable,
electron guns will expel electrons into space and
prevent the buildup of a static charge. If used long
enough, this system will bring down a satellite from
low-Earth orbit, and thereby save the roughly 20
percent of rocket fuel that is reserved to de-orbit
spent satellites. If solar cells are used to produce a
current in the tether, the generator becomes a mo-
tor, and the spacecraft’s orbit will be raised. Because
of the air resistance that exists in low-Earth orbit,
the International Space Station (ISS) needs a boost
from time to time. If it were boosted with tethers
powered by the station’s solar panels, up to two bil-
lion dollars in fuel costs might be saved over ten
years.
A bolo consists of two masses connected by a
tether and set spinning. The end masses are
equipped with grapples and thrusters to adjust posi-
tion. Long tethers will probably be Hoytethers, a
loosely woven Kevlar web. Their open structure
makes Hoytethers less likely to be severed by mete-
oroids. If a bolo station (at the center of mass of the
bolo) is in low-Earth orbit and therefore has a speed
of 7.7 kilometers per second and the rotating
tether’s tip speed is 2.4 kilometers per second with
respect to the station, the bolo’s rotation direction is
such that the tip speed subtracts from the orbital
speed for the tip closest to Earth. A spacecraft
launched from Earth need only be traveling at 5.3
11
Aerobatics and Flight
kilometers per second when it rendezvouses with,
and is seized by, the lower grapple. If the bolo is
much more massive than the spacecraft, the space-
craft will be lifted and accelerated by the tether so
that the spacecraft is traveling at 10.1 kilometers per
second when the tip is farthest from Earth.
At the appropriate time, the bolo will release the
spacecraft to travel to its next destination, perhaps a
second bolo in geosynchronous orbit, which in turn
might pass it on to a bolo in lunar orbit, which
might set it on the Moon. The great efficiency of
such a system is that it minimizes the fuel that must
be lifted and accelerated from Earth. However, the
bolos will slow down or fall into lower orbits as they
give energy to the spacecraft. The bolo in low-Earth
orbit could be boosted by using solar panels and a
conducting tether. Other bolos might be boosted
with solar-powered ion engines. Only steering en-
ergy would be required if the amount of mass going
from the Moon to low-Earth orbit were the same as
that going from low-Earth orbit to the Moon. (The
falling mass would provide the energy to lift the ris-
ing mass.) A nearly constant flow of traffic would be
required to make a bolo system cost-effective.
CONCLUSION
While many of the technologies described above re-
main of interest, the exploration of space has pro-
ceeded forward on many fronts, and by several dif-
ferent nations as well as private developers. China,
India, Brazil, Iran, England, France, Japan, United
States, and other nations all have active programs
with the goal of establishing colonies on the Moon
and on Mars. Commercial space flights are currently
available for the ultrawealthy—at US$400,000 per
person—to make a brief foray into space. The cost
of launch vehicles has been greatly reduced by the
SpaceX company, such that all flights to the ISS are
now delivered by SpaceX at roughly one-tenth the
cost of previous delivery method used by NASA.
SpaceX’s great coup was in the development of reus-
12
Principles of Aeronautics
able booster systems that can return and land safely
rather than being lost into the depths of the ocean.
All of these developments rely on standard chemical
rocket technology. Some would say this demon-
strates that previous rocket-based projects were ex-
tremely inefficient and wasteful of resources.
—Charles W. Rogers
Further Reading
Czysz, Paul A., and Claudio Bruno. Future Spacecraft
Propulsion Systems: Enabling Technologies for Space
Exploration. Praxis Publishing Limited, 2006.
Emrich, William J. Principles of Nuclear Rocket Propulsion.
Elsevier Science, 2016.
Farokhi, Saeed. Future Propulsion Systems and Energy Sources
in Sustainable Aviation. Wiley, 2020.
Mauldin, John H. Prospects for Interstellar Travel. Univelt,
1992.
Musha, Takaaki, and Yoshinuri Minami. Field Propulsion
System for Space Travel: Physics of Non-Conventional
Propulsion Methods for Interstellar Travel. Bentham
Science Publishers, 2011.
NASA. Evaluation of Advanced Propulsion Options for the Next
Manned Transportation System. CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform, 2018.
Sabry, Fouad. Plasma Propulsion: Can Space-X Use a Plasma
Prop for Starship? One Billion Knowledgeable, 2021.
Wright, Jerome L. Space Sailing. Gordon & Beach Science,
1992.
See also: Scramjet; Space shuttle; Spacecraft engineering;
Spaceflight
Aerobatics and Flight
Fields of Study: Physics; Pilot training
ABSTRACT
Aerobatics refers to any aerial maneuver involving abrupt
or extreme bank or pitch angles, unnecessary for normal
flight. Aerobatics are an integral part of military flight tac-
tics, air show demonstrations, and sport flying. An aero-
Principles of Aeronautics
batic pilot’s ability to retain spatial orientation and control
an airplane in three dimensions provides an extra measure
of safety in the event of an accidental upset.
KEY CONCEPTS
bank: the act of turning an aircraft while in flight, ei-
ther to the left or to the right
centrifugal force: the force felt by an object undergo-
ing rotation about a central axis, directed outward
from the center of rotation
pitch, roll, yaw: the three natural motions of an air-
craft in flight that must be controlled by the pilot
to maintain stable flight
REGULATIONS
Most aerobatic flying is for pleasure, but regional
and national contests are held every year, and a
world championship contest is held every other year.
Although there is no separate aerobatic rating, aero-
batics can be safely learned only in an aircraft that is
certified for the maneuvers and only under the tute-
lage of an experienced instructor.
Specifically, the US Federal Aviation Regulations
(FARs) require approved parachutes when two or
more occupants in an airplane intentionally exceed
a bank of 60 degrees or a pitch angle of 30 degrees
relative to the horizon. The basic aerobatic maneu-
vers are the slow roll, loop, spin, snap roll, aileron
or barrel roll, and the wingover/hammerhead stall.
Competition and air show figures combine these ba-
sic maneuvers into complex upright and inverted
versions. In the absence of a special waiver and to
protect passengers and the general populace, inten-
tional aerobatic maneuvers must be performed away
from crowded air space, above only sparsely popu-
lated areas, and at altitudes greater than 1,500 feet
above the surface.
Aerobatic aircraft include some gliders and heli-
copters. Because aerobatics places extra structural
and stability demands on an aircraft, only approved
maneuvers may be performed in a particular air-
Aerobatics and Flight
craft. For aerobatic certification in the United States,
an airplane must be capable of withstanding g-load
factors from minus 3 to 6 without permanent defor-
mation and loads of up to 50 percent greater (minus
4.5 to 9) without structural failure. The g-load fac-
tor, popularly known as the number of “g’s,” refers
to the acceleration of gravity. Sitting still on Earth,
one experiences an acceleration of 1 g, or a gravita-
tional force of 1, the normal sensation of gravity.
During periods of changing acceleration, such as a
banking turn in an airplane, the so-called g-loading
will change. Although the g-load factor in upright
level flight is 1, it becomes minus 1 in inverted level
flight. The best aerobatic aircraft, including those
suitable for competition at the highest level, are
stressed for load factors of 12 or more g’s.
Aerobatics places extra physical demands on the
pilot as well: loss of consciousness (positive g-load
factors) or burst blood vessels (negative g-load fac-
tors) result from sustained high load factors. Military
pilots have g-suits that help keep blood in their
heads during positive load factors, whereas competi-
tion pilots use reclined seats and muscle tensing. A
pilot’s tolerance to g-loads increases with practice.
SLOW ROLL
The slow roll is the most basic roll maneuver and the
hardest to learn. It must be mastered before solo
aerobatic flight should be considered. In this ma-
neuver, the aircraft is rolled about its longitudinal,
or nose-to-tail, axis without altering the direction of
flight.
Differential aileron deflection provides the torque
that produces the roll. The other two controls, the
elevator and the rudder, are used to keep the air-
plane from turning. When the roll is initiated, the
opposing rudder must be used, and this reaches a
maximum at about one-quarter, or about 90 de-
grees, through the roll. As the wings lose lift, the el-
evator must simultaneously be moved toward neu-
tral. For the next quarter-roll, the rudder pressure is
13
Aerobatics and Flight
The “Frecce Tricolori,” the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Air Force, 2021. Photo by Lawrence of Italia, via Wikimedia Commons.
reduced, and forward elevator is added, as the wings
are asked to generate negative lift. For the next 90
degrees of roll, rudder pressure in the direction of
the roll is added and the elevator is gradually neu-
tralized. In the last 90 degrees, elevator pressure is
increased to the value before the roll was initiated,
in level flight. The roll can be stopped at any point
by neutralizing the ailerons; a momentary stop every
90 degrees, for example, yields a four-point roll.
The slow roll is difficult to learn because elevator
and rudder inputs are constantly changing in a man-
ner completely different from those of other maneu-
vers, because the forces on the pilot are so different
and constantly changing, and because even a small
14
Principles of Aeronautics
error can place the aircraft in an inverted dive from
which a safe recovery can be difficult. If the roll is
initiated from level flight, the pilot senses an appar-
ent weight that varies from normal to zero to upside
down to zero to normal, corresponding to g-load
factors varying from (at least) 1 to 0 to -1 to 0 to 1.
Attempts to teach oneself this maneuver will al-
most certainly cost a great deal of altitude and ex-
ceed design speeds and loads. Beginning pilots of-
ten fail to add enough opposite elevator as they near
inverted flight, causing the nose to drop and allow-
ing the speed to drop and then build very rapidly.
At this point, pilots are disoriented and distracted by
hanging from their shoulder harness and will relax
Principles of Aeronautics
the aileron pressure, causing the roll to stop. The
natural and almost guaranteed reaction is then to
pull back on the stick or wheel, attempting a recov-
ery with a dangerous half-loop. A similar disastrous
reaction can be expected from a nonaerobatic pilot
when wingtip vortices or atmospheric turbulence
flips the plane well past a 90-degree bank.
The slow roll has been mastered when the control
inputs are instinctive, based on what the pilot wants
the nose to do. Rudder pressure on one side always
moves the nose in that direction, and forward move-
ment of the stick or wheel always moves the nose
away from the pilot. Once this concept is learned,
slow rolls in any direction—straight up, straight
down, or at an angle to the horizon—can be safely
executed. However, the vertical, climbing roll is al-
ways a challenge, because it lacks a forward refer-
ence point and poses the danger of an inadvertent
tail slide.
A slow roll is anything but slow in a modern, com-
petition aerobatic airplane, in which roll rates of 720
degrees per second are not uncommon. The roll can
be completed so rapidly that there is little time in
which to encounter difficulties. Jet fighters can roll
very rapidly without requiring rudder input.
LOOP
A loop is one of the prettiest and most enjoyable
aerobatic maneuvers, but skill is required to perform
it safely and well. If the pull-up is made too
abruptly, the aircraft can suffer either structural
damage or a high-speed stall and will not complete
the top of the loop. If the pull-up is too gradual, or
if there is inadequate speed, the aircraft will run out
of speed and fall inverted out of the maneuver.
A smooth but noncircular loop requires a g-load
factor of 3 to 3.5, whereas a competition-quality cir-
cular loop may require a g-load factor of 6. Good
aerobatic aircraft are fully symmetrical and can loop
from level flight from either erect or inverted flight.
A wingtip can be used for spatial reference during
Aerobatics and Flight
the second quarter of the loop, when the horizon
will be hidden but, once over the top, the pilot will
look overhead for the beautiful sight of the reap-
pearing horizon. Competition-quality “square” loops
can generate momentary g-load factors of 10 or
more.
The first pilots to perform the loop, in 1913, were
Petr Nesterov of Russia and Adolphe Pégoud of
France. In 1928, Speed Holman of Minnesota broke
the world’s upright looping record by performing
1,433 consecutive loops in a five-hour period.
SPIN
A spin’s downward spiral makes it a crowd pleaser,
although it is not a particularly pleasant maneuver
for the occupants of the plane. A spin is normally
initiated at a speed close to the stall speed with
power off, neutral aileron, and full rudder and ele-
vator deflection. After about one turn, the spin
should stabilize in a nose-low position, and the air-
speed should stabilize at a relatively slow speed, be-
cause both wings should be stalled, one more than
the other, creating considerable drag. Recovery is
usually effected with full opposite rudder to stop the
rotation and then at least a relaxation, if not a re-
verse deflection, of the elevator control. Pulling out
of the resulting dive generates a g-load factor of 2 or
more. All aerobatic pilots must be very well versed in
the spin characteristics of their aircraft, because any
failed maneuver often degenerates into a spin.
In a true, stable spin, the spin can be continued if
altitude remains and the airspeed does not increase.
Utility aircraft certificated for spinning may appear
to give a good spin entry, but the spin may become a
diving spiral, increasing the speed. The same will
happen in a good aerobatic airplane if the pilot does
not hold full elevator and rudder deflection.
Heavy aircraft such as fighter aircraft may show
wild gyrations upon spin entry and an oscillating
pitch attitude once the spin is established. The
World War II P-51D Mustang, for example, would
15
Aerobatics and Flight
oscillate from near-vertical to above the horizon and
would lose about 1,000 feet per turn; spins were not
to be performed below 12,000 feet.
Fully aerobatic aircraft can perform inverted
spins as well as upright spins, but the aircraft recov-
ers to inverted, stalled flight when the rotation is
stopped, from which recovery to level flight should
be made with a slow roll to minimize altitude loss.
The rudder may suffer less blanking in inverted
spins, allowing recovery to be faster. The inverted
spin is much more disorienting than an upright
spin and the pilot must concentrate on maintaining
full elevator deflection, or the spin will transition to
a diving spiral with rapidly increasing speed. If re-
covery from an upright spin is forced with down el-
evator and power, some aircraft will flick into an in-
verted spin.
If the aircraft is not certified for spins, or if the
center of gravity is too far aft, the spin may be an
unrecoverable flat spin with the nose on the horizon,
yawing almost entirely rather than exhibiting nearly
equal yaw and roll. Modern aerobatic aircraft with
fully inverted fuel and oil systems, however, can
force an upright or inverted spin to go flat with
power and aileron deflection against the spin. These
flat spins not only are recoverable but also form an
important part of many air show routines.
Because it is such an important maneuver, the
spin is the only aerobatic maneuver required of pi-
lots seeking to become flight instructors. The re-
quirement for parachutes is waived if an instructor is
teaching an instructor-student. Considering that a
low-altitude stall that degenerates into even an in-
cipient spin remains a leading cause of fatal acci-
dents, it would seem reasonable for more pilots to
become familiar and comfortable with efficient re-
coveries from incipient spins, entered in the same
fashion as accidental spins. Lieutenant Wilfred
Parke of England is generally credited with first us-
ing what became the classic spin recovery method,
in 1912.
16
Principles of Aeronautics
SNAP ROLL
A snap roll, also known in England as a flick roll,
uses the same control inputs as the spin, but in a
snap roll, the controls are applied with power on
and at speeds well above the unaccelerated stall
speed. The resulting differential lift of the wings
produces a rapid roll that can be very difficult to
stop at a precise point. Good aerobatic aircraft can
execute three or more consecutive snap rolls, both
upright and inverted, before the axis of the roll
changes excessively and the roll degenerates into a
power spin. The load factor varies, as the square of
the entry speed is divided by the unaccelerated stall
speed, but a considerable twisting moment is also
applied to the fuselage. This maneuver, among oth-
ers, teaches the aerobatic pilot that an aircraft can
exceed the critical angle of attack at any airspeed
and at any angle relative to the horizon.
AILERON ROLL
The most comfortable rolling maneuver is the aile-
ron roll, also known as the barrel roll. It is per-
formed through coordinated use of the ailerons
and rudder, basically continuing a climbing steep
turn to a 90-degree bank, letting the nose fall
through the horizon with reducing elevator pres-
sure as the roll continues to inverted flight and
then recovering with increasing elevator pressure
back to upright flight. The nose will trace out a sort
of circle around a point on the horizon. The radius
of the circle depends on the roll rate; if the roll is
slow, the circle must be large and the top of the cir-
cle must be far above the horizon to keep the nose
from dropping too low and building up a great
deal of speed in the lower half of the maneuver.
G-load factors of close to 1 throughout the maneu-
ver are achievable. An expert pilot can perform
this kind of roll in almost any airplane; in 1955,
test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the prototype
Boeing 707 airliner at a flight demonstration for
potential customers.
Principles of Aeronautics
WINGOVER AND HAMMERHEAD STALL
The hammerhead stall and the wingover are the
most common turnaround maneuvers used by air
show performers to maintain their presence in front
of the audience. A wingover is a maneuver that
changes the flight direction through 180 degrees
with negligible net change in altitude. It is per-
formed by simultaneously raising the nose and
smoothly banking to a 90-degree bank angle as the
flight direction changes by 90 degrees and then
smoothly reducing the bank angle to 0 degrees in a
descending turn to level flight in the opposite direc-
tion. Load factors should be in the range of 0 to 2
for a smoothly executed wingover, because there is
no attempt to maintain level flight in the steeply
banked turn.
In the hammerhead stall, known in England as
the stall turn, the aircraft is pitched straight up with
power on until it is pointing straight up. Shortly be-
fore the craft runs out of airspeed, full rudder is
used to rotate the nose to the right or the left, and
the rotation is stopped when the aircraft is heading
straight down. Recovery may be to either upright or
inverted level flight. Load factors need not exceed 2
or 3 if the initial entry and the pullout in recovering
are smooth and to upright flight. The “stall” part of
the maneuver’s name is a misnomer, because the an-
gle of attack is close to zero during the maneuver,
and no stall buffet should be felt. An aircraft with a
clockwise propeller rotation from the pilot’s view will
rotate best to the left. The greatest danger is waiting
too long to use full rudder, allowing the aircraft to
slide back on its tail, known as a tailslide, which
could damage some of the control surfaces on other-
wise aerobatic aircraft.
ADVANCED AEROBATIC MANEUVERS
The Immelmann turn, named after German World
War I fighter pilot Max Immelmann, is a half-loop
followed by a half-roll to upright flight. If the speed
Aerobatics and Flight
is low or the loop is stopped too abruptly, a sudden
flick into an inverted spin is possible.
The Cuban Eight combines three-quarters of a
loop, a roll to upright, another three-quarters of a
loop, and a roll to upright again. From the ground
it appears in the form of a horizontal eight.
The rolling turn, a very demanding maneuver to
do well, combines a 360-degree turn with a roll, ei-
ther to the inside or the outside of the turn. The
square loop attempts to minimize the radius of the
turns at the top and bottom of the loop and gener-
ates some of the highest momentary load factors.
The Lomcovák is a spectacular, twisting, tumbling
maneuver invented by the Czech Ladislav Bezák in
1957. It is usually entered from a climbing, inverted
snap roll and is commonly demonstrated at air shows.
Another spectacular maneuver is the torque roll,
in which the airplane is rolled pointing straight up,
and the roll is continued, with the help of engine
torque, for a few fuselage lengths in the ensuing
tailslide.
Powerful aerobatic airplanes can generate enough
fuselage lift and horizontal thrust component to
maintain level flight in a 90-degree bank, known as
knife-edge flight. Russian pilots have demonstrated
the cobra maneuver, in which a jet fighter, flying in
level flight, is abruptly pitched up through 90 de-
grees of rotation or more, recovering to level flight
with relaxation of the stick.
ARESTI SYMBOLS
The distinguished Spanish aerobatic pilot Colonel
José Luis de Aresti Aguirre developed a shorthand
notation for aerobatic maneuvers. First published in
1961, Aresti symbols have become universally used
to outline aerobatic routines for both contests and
air shows. Each figure in Aresti’s dictionary includes
a difficulty, or “K,” factor, by which, in contests,
judges’ scores—from 0 to 10—are multiplied.
—W. N. Hubin
17
Aerodynamics and Flight
Further Reading
Carson, Annette. Flight Fantastic: The Illustrated History of
Aerobatics. Haynes, 1986.
DeLacerda, Fred. Surviving Spins. Iowa State UP, 1989.
Kershner, William K. The Basic Aerobatic Manual, With Spin
and Upset Recovery Techniques. Iowa State UP, 1987.
Luger, Jim. Loop, Roll, and Keep Control—A Step-by-step
Aerobatic, Spin and Upset Manual. James Luger, 2020.
Marrero, Frank. Lincoln Beachey: The Man Who Owned the
Sky. Tripod Press, 2017.
Pilkington, David J. Aerobatics Down Under. Revised and
updated ed., David J. Pilkington, 2019.
Thomas, Bill. Fly for Fun with Bill Thomas. 3rd ed., Yellow
Schoolhouse Press LLC, 2022.
Williams, Neil. Aerobatics. Crowood Press, 2014.
See also: Flight roll and pitch; Flight schools; Flight simu-
lators; Forces of flight; Plane rudders; Training and edu-
cation of pilots; Weather conditions; Wind shear
Aerodynamics and Flight
Fields of Study: Physics; Aeronautical engineering;
Fluid dynamics; Mathematics
ABSTRACT
Aerodynamics refers to the study of airflow over bodies.
Knowledge of aerodynamics allows for the prediction of the
forces and moments on airplanes. This allows the design of
safe and efficient aircraft that can perform a large variety
of tasks ranging from small radio-controlled craft to airlin-
ers and supersonic military airplanes.
KEY CONCEPTS
drag: the resistance to motion through a fluid due to
friction between the moving object and the fluid
medium
lift: the upward pressure experienced by wings due
to differential pressure between upper and lower
surfaces of the wing as it moves through a fluid
medium
18
Principles of Aeronautics
pitch: the tendency of the nose of an aircraft to move
up or down vertically as it moves through a fluid
medium
roll: the tendency of the body of an aircraft to rotate
about its central axis as it moves through a fluid
medium
yaw: the tendency of an aircraft to turn horizontally
about its center of mass as it moves through a
fluid medium
HISTORICAL ASPECTS
In the late seventeenth century, English physicist
Isaac Newton laid the foundations for not only mod-
ern mechanics and calculus but also fluid mechanics.
Newton’s analysis of fluid flow considered air to be
composed of individual particles that struck a body’s
surface. This analysis was applied to determine the
drag of an object in a moving fluid stream but gave
poor results, because it did not account for the effect
of the wing or body on the oncoming air. Interest-
ingly, it later proved to be far more valuable in hy-
personic flow analysis. Swiss mathematician
Daniel Bernoulli and his father, Johann I, both
published treatises in the 1740s that greatly clarified
the understanding of the behavior of fluid flows.
Eighteenth-century Swiss mathematician Leonhard
Euler noted the problems with Newton’s model and
proposed a more accurate formula for drag in 1755.
Subsequent aerodynamic theories developed in
the 1800s and early 1900s were based on the works
of Newton, Euler, and the Bernoullis. In 1894, Brit-
ish inventor Frederick William Lanchester devel-
oped a theory that could predict the aerodynamics
of wings. However, Lanchester published this work
many years later, in 1907. An acquaintance with
Lanchester’s theory might have saved considerable
effort for Orville and Wilbur Wright, who first flew a
heavier-than-air craft in 1903. Instead, the Wrights
gained an understanding of aerodynamics through
numerous wind-tunnel experiments conducted in
their homebuilt wind tunnel. Subsequent advances
Principles of Aeronautics Aerodynamics and Flight

in aerodynamics are associated with individuals, in-
cluding Max Munk, Adolf Busemann, Ludwig
Prandtl, and Robert Jones, who developed the prin-
ciples of aerodynamic analysis.
AERODYNAMIC FLIGHT REGIMES
Fluids comprise both gases and liquids. A major dif-
ference between a fluid and a solid is that a fluid de-
forms readily. The major distinction between a gas
and liquid is that a liquid is difficult to compress. The
atmosphere is a gas composed of approximately 78
percent nitrogen, 20.9 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent
argon, 0.042 percent carbon dioxide, and in very
small quantities, neon, helium, krypton, hydrogen,
xenon, ozone, and radon, based on their volume. The
study of the behavior of a body immersed in a moving
liquid is called hydrodynamics; in a moving gas, gas
dynamics; and in air, aerodynamics.
Aerodynamics may be categorized as either low-
or high-speed, depending on where the fluid behav-

A NASA wake turbulence study at Wallops Island in 1990. A vortex is created by passage of an aircraft wing, revealed by colored smoke rising from
the ground. Vortices are one of the many phenomena associated with the study of aerodynamics. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. [Public domain.]

19
Aerodynamics and Flight
ior changes. A common demarcation is subsonic and
supersonic flow, where the latter has airspeeds
greater than the speed of sound. Transonic flow,
where both sub- and supersonic flow may exist, is
also usually treated as a distinct regime. Increasing
airspeed sees supersonic flow evolving into hyper-
sonic flow at about five times the speed of sound.
Difficulty in the analysis of airflow has additionally
resulted in airflows being divided into viscous flows
and inviscid flows, in which the latter are assumed to
have no viscosity and are generally much simpler to
analyze. The basic principles underlying aircraft
flight are well described assuming inviscid flow.
BASICS
The flow of air over a body is governed by the
so-called continuity equation and the momentum
equations. These equations state that mass can be
neither created nor destroyed and that the sum of
the forces experienced by a body equals its rate of
change of momentum, or its quantity of motion.
Analysis of these equations applied to various flight
problems laid the foundations of aerodynamics. As
air flows over an airplane, the plane causes the air to
change its velocity, which also leads to changes in
the static pressure distribution over the aircraft. The
static pressure is the pressure that is felt when mov-
ing at the speed of the airstream. The static pressure
distribution causes forces and moments, or torques,
over the aircraft. The equation that relates velocity
and static pressure is referred to as Bernoulli’s prin-
ciple.
SUBSONIC AIRFLOW OVER AIRFOILS
The forces and moment that an aircraft experiences
are affected by the air density, which in turn is af-
fected by air pressure, temperature, and the amount
of moisture in the air, as well as the speed and size
of the airplane. As the aircraft flies through the air,
it displaces air downward. By pushing the air down,
the aircraft’s wings experience a reaction force that
20
Principles of Aeronautics
tends to push the airplane up, creating lift. The lift
is defined as being perpendicular to the oncoming
airstream. One may imagine the lift of a wing flying
along a wave of high pressure to be somewhat like a
surfer on a surfboard riding an ocean wave.
In cross-section, the wing of an airplane presents
as an airfoil profile. The shape of the airfoil profile’s
camber line, which is the line equidistant between
the upper and lower surface of the airfoil, increases
the lift generated at a given angle of attack if the air-
foil has positive camber. Positive camber indicates
that the leading edge and trailing edges, or the
front and back of the airfoil, are curved down. If the
airfoil has negative camber, the lift generated at a
particular angle of attack is reduced compared to
that of a flat airfoil with no camber. Consequently,
positive camber or curvature of the camber line has
the effect of increasing the lift by a constant amount
for a given angle of attack, compared to a flat or
symmetrical airfoil. The larger the camber of the
airfoil, that is, its curvature, the greater the lift the
airfoil will generate. This effect is most pronounced
as the location of the maximum camber, or highest
point of the airfoil, moves to the trailing edge, or
back of the airfoil. The thickness of the airfoil, with
reasonable accuracy, does not directly affect the lift
the airfoil section generates, but it may affect the na-
ture of the airfoil’s stall.
The shape of the airfoil profile and its thickness
distribution have a profound effect on the nature of
the airfoil’s stall. When an airfoil’s angle of attack is
greater than approximately 12 degrees, many air-
foils will stall. This condition is due to the air’s vis-
cosity and is caused by a disruption and separation
of airflow over the airfoil’s upper surface. Stall
causes lift to decrease as the airfoil’s angle of attack
is increased. Flow separation also causes a large in-
crease in drag, referred to as pressure drag. For very
thin wings, or a flat plate, for example, the stall is
quite moderate, and the loss of lift is gradual. For
airfoils with a maximum thickness in the 9 percent
Principles of Aeronautics
range, where the maximum thickness of the airfoil
divided by the length, or chord, of the airfoil is 0.09,
the nature of the stall is quite sharp, and the loss of
lift is dramatic. Thicker airfoil profiles, analogous to
very thin airfoils, also have weak stalls, with a grad-
ual loss of lift.
Numerous methods and devices have been devel-
oped to delay the stall of airfoils. These usually
comprise a modification to the nose of the airfoil
and typically involve pointing the nose down or ex-
tending it off the airfoil and rotating it down.
These devices are referred to as leading-edge flaps,
or slats. Some birds use a similar concept with a
feather called the alula, which forms a slat and
stops the bird’s wing from stalling. For a given an-
gle of attack below stall, these leading-edge devices
generally do not much change the lift of the airfoil.
However, they do extend the lift range of the air-
foil and can increase it up to 10 degrees beyond
the typical stall angle. These types of devices can
be seen, and often heard extending or retracting,
on airliners extending from the front of the wing at
takeoff or landing.
On modern aircraft, all components are stream-
lined, that is, smoothly blended. The importance of
streamlining became evident in the 1920s, when it
was found that smoothly faired, or joined, bodies,
such as aircraft wheels with aerodynamic fairing, had
much lower drag than nonfaired bodies. The fairing
allowed the air flowing over the wheel to conform
smoothly to the surface. Without the fairing, air
would separate off the wheel and form large turbu-
lent eddies, or swirling motions, in the wake behind
the wheel, greatly increasing drag. The effect of
streamlining is to reduce the tendency of the flow to
separate off the surface. This separation is caused by
the viscosity of the air.
Theoretically, at low speed in an inviscid
airstream, an airfoil does not suffer any drag. This
condition is known as d’Alembert’s paradox, after
eighteenth-century French mathematician Jean le
Aerodynamics and Flight
Rond d’Alembert, who calculated this apparent
anomaly but was unable to explain it. The reason for
the paradox was the exclusion of the effects of the
air’s viscosity in d’Alembert’s calculations. Due to
viscosity, airfoils experience a component of drag
called skin friction drag. The skin friction is caused
by the viscosity of the fluid layers near the airfoil
surface. On the wing surface, the speed of the air is
zero, a condition referred to as the no-slip condi-
tion. However, at some small distance above the air-
foil surface, the airspeed reaches that which would
occur if the flow were inviscid. The region between
the surface and this point is referred to as the
boundary layer. The nature and behavior of this
boundary layer have a significant impact on the skin
friction drag and stalling characteristics of the air-
foil.
The boundary layer can either be laminar, turbu-
lent, or transitional from laminar to turbulent. A
laminar boundary layer is composed of air moving
in orderly lines. A turbulent boundary layer has air
moving close to the airfoil surface in swirling mo-
tions. A laminar boundary layer has far lower skin
friction drag than the turbulent boundary layer;
however, it is also more prone to separate from the
airfoil surface. Thus, most airfoils have an initially
laminar boundary layer that flows from the front of
the airfoil back along the surface. At some point,
the boundary layer transitions from laminar to tur-
bulent and is typically turbulent from this point to
the trailing edge of the airfoil. Boundary layer
transition can be caused by disturbances of insects,
ice crystals, high airspeeds, and roughness or im-
perfections on the airfoil surface. To improve per-
formance at high angles of attack by keeping the
boundary layer attached to the airfoil upper sur-
face, an aircraft designer may choose to cause the
boundary layer to transition from laminar to turbu-
lent at some point on the airfoil. This may be
achieved using small protuberances attached to the
airfoil’s surface.
21
Aerodynamics and Flight
ULTRALOW-SPEED FLIGHT
Efficient flight at very low speeds, such as those of
slow-moving birds and insects, presents unique com-
plications. Typical airfoil shapes do not generate
much lift at these low airspeeds. The boundary layer
at these low speeds is normally always laminar, and
so easily separates off the airfoil surface. When this
occurs, the lift of the airfoil decreases significantly
and its drag increases. Insects and small birds such
as hummingbirds use complicated wing motions to
create lift at their low airspeeds. These insects and
birds develop both so-called steady and unsteady
lift, the latter of which is caused by the acceleration
of the wing and its carefully performed motion
through the air.
SUBSONIC FLOW OVER WINGS
If the wingspan of the aircraft were infinitely long
and the air were assumed to have no viscosity, the
wing would theoretically generate a lift force and a
moment but no drag. However, aircraft do not have
infinite wings, and thus an aircraft in steady cruise
experiences lift and drag, as well as a pitching mo-
ment, which tends to move the aircraft nose up or
down, and possibly either a side force, or yawing
moment, which tends to displace the nose from side
to side, or a rolling moment, which causes the air-
craft to roll about its fuselage such that one wing is
higher than the other. The lift of an airfoil is re-
duced when the airfoil is incorporated into a wing of
finite length. The shorter the wingspan is relative to
the chord of the wing, the less lift is generated. The
largest losses of lift are near the wingtips.
On a finite-length wing, air from the lower surface
of the wing tries to curl up around the wingtip to the
upper surface, causing the formation of two tor-
nado-like structures, known as wingtip vortices, that
trail from both wingtips backward. These vortices
possess high rotational speeds and pose a significant
threat to other aircraft that may fly through them.
These vortices require delays between takeoffs and
22
Principles of Aeronautics
landings of aircraft using the same runways at air-
ports, in order that vortices may have time to
weaken.
The component of drag due to the aircraft having
a finite-length wing is called vortex drag. Generally,
a wing’s vortex drag is independent of its span.
Thus, wings with either a large or a short span will,
to a first approximation, develop the same vortex
drag. The larger-span wing will, however, generate
far more lift, and thus the vortex drag will have a
greater effect for short-span wings. To keep the
amount of vortex drag low compared to the lift gen-
erated, a wing should have a large span. This is the
reason why airliners have wings with large spans,
and also the reason why gliders have narrow-chord,
large-span wings.
Aircraft may have many different types of wing
shapes that are dictated by the aircraft’s function. A
glider flies at low speed but needs to generate a
large amount of lift with little drag. As a result,
glider wings have large spans but small chords. An
airliner needs to fly efficiently but is limited in its
wingspan by airport considerations. A large wing-
span results in a heavy wing, which is required to
support the wing structure. As a result, airliner
wings have a large span but not as large as their
chord.
As aircraft fly faster and approach the speed of
sound, the flow over the wing changes. Shock waves
may appear on the wings, even though the aircraft is
still flying subsonically. An airfoil accelerates the air
flowing over its upper surface such that it may be-
come locally supersonic. A shock wave is a very thin
flow discontinuity that occurs in supersonic flow and
causes the airflow through it to slow down signifi-
cantly. Shock waves are accompanied by large in-
creases in drag on the airplane and are thus unde-
sirable. A way to delay the onset of shock waves on
wings is to sweep the wings back, a commonly seen
design on airliners, in which most wings have a
sweep of about 20 to 30 degrees. This sweep effec-
Principles of Aeronautics
tively reduces the airspeed that causes the shock
waves to form and so allows the plane to fly closer to
the speed of sound, normally about 760 miles per
hour at sea level. The speed of sound varies with the
square root of the air’s temperature.
SUPERSONIC AERODYNAMICS
When the airspeed is greater than the speed of
sound, the airflow is said to be supersonic. Aircraft
that are designed to fly supersonically have distinc-
tive design features. At supersonic speed, a new
component of drag, called wave drag, appears in ad-
dition to the vortex, pressure, and skin friction drag.
The wave drag is usually caused by the presence of
shock waves on the wing or airfoil. This drag compo-
nent is sensitive to the thickness of the wing and the
lift that the wing is generating and increases with
both. To keep wave drag as low as possible, super-
sonic airplanes may have very thin wings, such as
those seen on fighter aircraft, highly swept wings, or
a combination of both.
The wing on the Concorde is an excellent example
of a supersonic wing design. A popular wing
planform shape is the delta, or triangular, wing, upon
which the Concorde’s wing is based. The design re-
quirements for efficient flight at supersonic speed
and subsonic speed are contradictory. At low speeds,
a large-span wing is desirable, whereas at high
speeds, a highly swept wing is most effective. These
requirements have led to the development of the
so-called swing wing, seen on aircraft developed in
the 1960s and 1970s, such as the European Panavia
Tornado and the US B-1 bomber. For low-speed
flight, the wings sweep forward, whereas for
high-speed flight, the wings sweep rearward. How-
ever, this design’s prohibitive cost and structural
weight have generally hindered its widespread use.
A problem with wings designed for supersonic
flight is that, due to their large sweep and small
wingspans, they are poor lift generators. That is,
they do not develop a large amount of lift for a par-
Aeroelasticity
ticular angle of attack, which can pose serious diffi-
culties when these aircraft either take off and land at
very high speeds requiring long runways. One way
to alleviate this problem is by designing the highly
swept wing to have a sharp nose or leading edge.
This design causes the airflow over the wing to form
two tornado-like vortices that lie above the wing.
These vortices may be clearly seen in photographs
of the Concorde taking off or landing on humid
days. These vortices greatly increase the lift of the
wing, but they also significantly increase drag.
—Lance Wayne Traub
Further Reading
Anderson, J. D. Fundamentals of Aerodynamics. 3rd ed.,
McGraw-Hill, 2001.
Badick, Joseph R., and Brian A. Johnson. Flight Theory and
Aerodynamics: A Practical Guide for Operational Safety.
Wiley, 2021.
Dalca, Cezar. Aerodynamics, Aeronautics and Flight Mechanics.
Scitus Academics, 2015.
Drela, Mark. Flight Vehicle Aerodynamics. MIT Press, 2014.
Ianiro, Andrea, and Stefano Discetti. Experimental
Aerodynamics. CRC Press, 2017.
Liu, Peiqing. Aerodynamics. Springer Nature, 2022.
Phillips, Warren F. Aerodynamics of Flight. John Wiley &
Sons, 2014.
Wild, Jochen. High-Lift Aerodynamics. CRC Press, 2022.
See also: Aeronautical engineering; Ailerons, flaps, and
airplane wings; Airfoils; Animal flight; Flight roll and
pitch; Fluid dynamics; Forces of flight; Plane rudders;
Pressure
Aeroelasticity
Fields of Study: Physics; Aeronautical engineering;
Fluid dynamics; Mathematics
ABSTRACT
Aeroelasticity is a field of science that studies the interac-
tion between an object that is encountering moving air and
23
Aeroelasticity
the forces generated by that air. It specifically looks at what
happens when air hits an object that is both solid and elas-
tic, or movable, and the way the air can bend or distort
that object. Since it was first defined in the mid-twentieth
century, aeroelasticity has become an important factor in
designing aircraft, buildings, and a number of other items
for maximum function and safety.
KEY CONCEPTS
buzz: vibration experienced by an aircraft in flight as
a result of forces exerted by the air against the air-
craft as it moves
wake: residual disturbance or turbulent air currents
such as vortices caused by the movement of a
body through a fluid medium
BACKGROUND
The word “aeroelasticity” comes from the Greek
words aero, meaning “air,” and elastikos, meaning
“propulsive.” In the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the Latinized form, elasticus, became “elastic,”
and adopted the meaning of “expanding spontane-
ously to fill the available space.” In 1947, English en-
gineer Arthur Roderick Collar defined a new term,
“aeroelasticity,” as the study of the forces at work
when moving air encounters inert and elastic forces.
The forces created by moving air are known as
“aerodynamics.” Aerodynamics can affect an object
that is moving through the air, such as a car, air-
plane, or bird, or an object that is stationary with air
moving around it, such as a building, tree, or flag-
pole. The force exerted by the air can be significant
and can be affected by some characteristics of the
object. For instance, a sports car that is designed to
be low to the ground with a hood angled to allow air
to easily flow over it is going to encounter less resis-
tance from the air than a large eighteen-wheeled
truck, and a thin flagpole will withstand the forces of
a heavy wind better than a large billboard will.
Objects that encounter the forces of air are gener-
ally a combination of solid and elastic components.
24
Principles of Aeronautics
For example, the metal of an airplane body is solid
and inert, but the body is made of multiple parts that
move in relation to one another, no matter how solid
they may appear. The parts themselves may be rigid,
but the areas where they connect can flex and move,
giving the entire object an elastic quality. Air pushing
against the parts in a way that brings them together
can compact the object, while air forces that push one
of the parts away from the other can cause the object
to flex and expand. In either case, the object is dis-
torted by the air from the form that it has when there
is no air pushing against it. Aeroelasticity is the study
of how these three forces interact with one another. It
also encompasses the craft of designing items to with-
stand the distortion that results in elastic objects as
the result of the wind.
OVERVIEW
Aeroelasticity is a factor in the design and use of
items that must withstand the effects of moving air.
Individuals who study or work with aeroelasticity are
concerned with several specific aspects of this effect.
These include flutter, divergence, buffeting, dy-
namic response, load distribution, control effective-
ness, and control system reversal. Some of these fac-
tors affect objects that are moving through the air,
such as a plane, while others are also encountered by
objects that are stationary with air moving past, such
as a skyscraper. These effects can be minor, causing
slight, almost imperceptible, vibrations; or they can
be serious, resulting in damage to the object. Of
these, the two most significant to the study of
aeroelasticity are divergence and flutter.
Divergence occurs when the force of the wind is
greater than the ability of a structure, such as a
plane or building, to overcome that force. This leads
to twisting of the structure and can result in struc-
tural failure. Divergence can be overcome by adjust-
ing the angle at which the structure encounters the
wind (such as angling the wings of a plane) and/or
by increasing the stiffness of the structure.
Principles of Aeronautics
Mass balance protruding from an aileron used to suppress flutter. Photo by Badobadop, via Wikimedia Commons.
Flutter is instability in the structure that is caused
by its elasticity. The movement of the components of
the structure will cause slight vibrations as the struc-
ture adjusts to the wind forces. Pilots often refer to
this as “buzz.”
Other phenomena that are considered in the
study of aeroelasticity include buffeting, or the
Aeroelasticity
forces of variations in air movement, such as the
“wake,” or air disturbance, left by another aircraft;
dynamic response, which are structure distortions
that result from wind gusts or sudden movements of
an aircraft; load distribution, which refers to how
these distortions are spread over the entire surface
of a structure; control effectiveness, which addresses
25
Aeronautical Engineering
how the aerodynamic disturbances affect the han-
dling ability of an aircraft; and control system rever-
sal, which occurs when the aerodynamics outside an
aircraft cause the opposite of the expected effect
when the controls are used.
Any of these factors can cause structural failure,
which is a particular danger in aircraft. To avoid po-
tentially disastrous effects from aeroelasticity, engi-
neers use careful design and extensive product test-
ing. This testing can involve wind tunnels, in which
models of a plane or parts of a plane can be exposed
to forces of wind that will match and exceed those
that will be experienced in use. These tests can also
simulate the effects of winds at various tempera-
tures, such as the very cold temperatures experi-
enced by large passenger aircraft flying tens of thou-
sands of feet in the air.
Aircraft models can also be subjected to vibrations
that will simulate what they will experience in the
air. This testing is conducted while the plane is
safely on the ground. Components of buildings,
such as beams or wall structures that will be part of a
tall skyscraper, can also be tested in this way. Test-
ing can simulate the flutter that could be encoun-
tered in certain environmental conditions.
The study of aeroelasticity is helping to create
safer buildings and aircraft. These structures can
be built to withstand the effects of the maximum
aerodynamic forces that can be anticipated during
their use. The study of aeroelasticity scenarios can
also aid with the development of simulations that
will help pilots be prepared to deal with the effects
of aeroelasticity they may encounter in actual
flight.
—Janine Ungvarsky
Further Reading
“Aeroelasticity: Wing—Flutter and Divergence.”
Aerodynamics for Students, s6.aeromech.usyd.edu.au/
aerodynamics/index.php/sample-page/aeroelasticity/.
Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
26
Principles of Aeronautics
Bishop, R. E. D. “Arthur Roderick Collar, 22 February
1908-12 February 1986.” Royal Society,1 Dec. 1987,
rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roybiogmem/3
3/163. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
Dimitriadis, G. “Aircraft Design.” University of Liege,
www.ltas-cm3.ulg.ac.be/AERO0023-1/ConceptionAeroAe
roelasticite.pdf. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
Lucas, Jim. “What Is Aerodynamics?” Live Science, 20 Sept.
2014,
www.livescience.com/47930-what-is-aerodynamics.html.
Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
Moraguez, Matthew. “Aeroelasticity.” University of Florida,
plaza.ufl.edu/moraguezma/Aeroelasticity.pdf. Accessed
18 Dec. 2017.
Myers, Andrew. “Good Vibrations: Stanford Engineers Put
a Damper on ‘Aeroelastic Flutter.’” Stanford Report, 24
Mar. 2011,
news.stanford.edu/news/2011/march/airplane-aeroelastic
-flutter-032411.html. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
Names, Ben. “5 Things You Should Know about Flutter.”
Structural Design and Analysis,
structures.aero/blog/5-things-should-know-flutter/.
Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
“So Just What Is Aeroelasticity?” Georgia Tech School of
Aerospace Engineering,
www.msmith.gatech.edu/aeroelasticity. Accessed 18 Dec.
2017.
See also: Aerodynamics and flight; Aeronautical engineer-
ing; Airplane accident investigation; Airplane safety issues;
Forces of flight; Pressure; Temperature; Wind shear; Wind
tunnels
Aeronautical Engineering
Fields of Study: Physics; Aeronautical engineering;
Mechanical engineering; Mathematics
ABSTRACT
Aeronautical engineering is the study, design, and manu-
facture of aircraft and spacecraft. Aeronautical engineer-
ing is responsible for the development of and advancements
in aviation and spaceflight.
Principles of Aeronautics
KEY CONCEPTS
bomber: an aircraft designed for the delivery of
bombs, water, and other ordinance to be dropped
on a target
crewed flight: air travel requiring the presence of a pi-
lot and other personnel to maintain the aircraft’s
flight
fighter: an aircraft designed for engaging other air-
craft in aerial combat
SST: acronym for supersonic transport
supersonic: at speeds greater than the speed of
sound
tanker: an aircraft designed to transport fuel for
mid-air refueling
ENGINEERING
In the first century of crewed flight, which began in
December, 1903, the application of the new science
of aerodynamics was translated into flying ma-
chines by people who understood engineering and
problem solving. The industry that grew from this
small beginning made amazing strides in the first
century of air travel. It is an industry built around
visionary engineers and pilots.
Aeronautical engineering had its true beginning
before Orville and Wilbur Wright but the two
brothers were pioneers in the techniques, pro-
cesses, and system testing that were at the heart of
the engineering design and development of aircraft
and spacecraft. The conceptualization of an aircraft
begins with the identification of something useful
to be accomplished by an air machine. The process
begins with sketches of an air vehicle to fulfill the
performance expectations for the aircraft. In the
first two decades of aircraft design and operations,
many concepts were proposed, but by the end of
World War I, the basics of successful aircraft design
were established. Future refinements would come
through better tools, materials, and concepts. At
the beginning of the second century of crewed
flight, the process involves digitally created draw-
Aeronautical Engineering
ings that are sent to machines that make the basic
parts, which are then assembled, tested, and pre-
pared for flight test.
Twentieth-century aircraft engineering refine-
ments moved at a speed unseen in any previous pe-
riod of the industrial world. The motivation and
excitement of flying higher, faster, and with larger
payloads seemed to drive innovation and to de-
mand engineering solutions. By the end of World
War II, the aviation industry was fully established
as a significant contributor to the economic and
military strength of the United States. European
aerospace also produced leaders in this field. Com-
panies were built on the talents of engineers and
the skills of craftsman. Engineering disciplines ex-
panded, and in the late 1950s, aeronautical engi-
neering became aerospace engineering. In most
aircraft manufacturing firms, the engineering de-
partment was second in size only to the production
groups.
Typically, in the middle of the twentieth century,
modern aerospace companies spread their prod-
ucts between commercial enterprises and govern-
ment contracts. The bread-and-butter contracts
came from the federal government until the end of
the Cold War. Commercial applications of engi-
neering ideas were spun off from aircraft and mis-
siles that had been developed for the military.
However, by 1990, the industry was in decline. Fol-
lowing the Gulf War in 1991, the downsizing of the
air arms of the military accelerated. The demand
for large numbers of new and different military air-
craft came under such scrutiny that few of the new
programs survived. On the commercial side of the
industry, the engineering of new and better trans-
ports and aircraft destined for the air carrier mar-
kets stopped in favor of building on existing con-
cepts to build bigger aircraft with bigger engines.
Airspeed, comfort, and passenger loading ceased to
be major requirements and took a back seat to eco-
nomically viable air transport.
27
Aeronautical Engineering
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
There are three significant eras in the expansion of
the aerospace industry. These coincide with technol-
ogy improvements as well as political changes that
affected the industry. The first period started with
the Wright brothers’ successful efforts at powered
flight and ended with the advent of the jet engine.
The next period began when jet engines were being
put into all new aircraft designs, and this period saw
rapid advances in aircraft performance. The last pe-
riod began with the introduction of digital computer
controls for the aircraft. This development made it
possible to design and build incredibly safe and reli-
able aerospace systems.
Out of World War II came large bombers and
cargo aircraft. When jet engines were added to these
NASA engineers, seen here in mission control during Apollo 13, worked to ensure the safety of the operation and astronauts onboard. Photo via
Wikimedia Commons. [Public domain.]
28
Principles of Aeronautics
aircraft they held promise for faster and higher,
hence more efficient and comfortable, air transporta-
tion for the public. The first such jet transport built
for the British Overseas Airway Corporation (BOAC,
which became British Airways) was the Comet. How-
ever, the understanding of structural issues arising
from rapid changes in pressure on certain parts of
the aircraft, along with manufacturing techniques
from the 1940s, resulted in an unsafe aircraft. After
two exploded in flight due to structural failure and
one burst during ground pressure testing, the world
of aeronautical engineering became aware of fatigue
failures and the need to design fail-safe structures. At
the time, the US Air Force had Boeing designing and
building a jet tanker using technology like that ap-
plied to its highly successful swept-wing B-47 jet
Another random document with
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 PART FIFTH.

ESTIMATION OF GASES HELD IN SOILS.

276. Relation of Soil Composition to Gases.—The power of a

soil for occluding gases rests primarily on its composition as
determined by silt analysis. The discussion of this part of the subject is
so nearly related to that of the physical properties of the soil that it
might properly have been included in that part of the work. Since,
however, we deal in this part more with the determination of the gas
constituents of the soil, it was deemed preferable to place it after the
silt analysis and as introductory to the general estimation by more
strictly analytical processes of the chemical constituents of the soil.
277. Occurrence of Carbon Dioxid.—The amount of organic
matter in the soil, according to Wollny,[179] is no indication of the
quantity of carbon dioxid when the organic matter is in excess. The
percentage of carbon dioxid is only proportional to the amount of
organic matter when this is in small quantities. Large quantities of
organic matter do increase the amount of carbon dioxid, but the
increase is not a proportional one, since a larger quantity of this gas in
the air of a soil reduces the activity of the organisms which produce
oxidation. Water and temperature have a greater influence on the
oxidation, and act in an opposite direction to that of the organic
matter. The amount of free gas in the soil affords no indication either
of the intensity of the action of oxidation or of the amount of organic
matter.
The addition of liquid manure to the soil results in a reduction of the
decomposition of the organic matter when the quantity of the salts
therein contained is greater than that already present in the soil. But if
the liquid manure is dilute, and the absorptive power of the soil for
salts is great, then the decomposition is promoted.
 278. Absorption of Aqueous Vapor.—The power of a soil to
resist drought depends largely upon its coefficient of absorption for
aqueous vapor. Hilgard has shown[180] that at temperatures between 7°
and 21°, the amount of aqueous vapor absorbed by a thin layer of a
clay or soil not unusually rich in humus, in a saturated atmosphere, is
sensibly constant. In general, clay soils are more absorbent than sandy
ones, yet there is no direct connection between the amount of clay
present and the absorbent power of the soil. Evidently the hygroscopic
coefficient is largely controlled by the presence with the clay of the
powdery ingredients which determine its looseness of texture, and it is
found that the finer silts themselves possess a considerable absorbing
power. According to Whitney this is largely dependent upon the extent
of the surface area of the soil grains and upon the size and
arrangement of these grains. Again, the presence of hydrated ferric
oxid materially influences this power, so that the amount of iron
present must always be taken into consideration.
279. Methods of Study.—The study of the deportment of a soil
with vapors or gases may be divided into two general classes. The first
depends on the subjection of a sample of soil to the saturating
influence of a given vapor or gas and measuring the amount thereof
absorbed, either directly by increase of weight, or by the diminution in
the amount of gas originally supplied. The maximum absorbent
capacity of a soil under given conditions for a gas or vapor is in this
way determined.
In the second class the determination consists in accurately
estimating the amount of gas which is absorbed by a soil in natural
conditions or in situ, thus giving the natural percentages of the
gaseous constituents of the soil.
In the first case in general, the principle of the method depends
upon the exposure of the soil for a given time under given conditions,
to an atmosphere of the gas to be absorbed. The principle of the
second class of determinations depends upon the extraction, usually
by means of suction, from a given mass of soil of the gaseous matters
therein contained. The general details of the methods of procedure for
the first class are found in the following directions for manipulation:
280. Determination of the Maximum Hygroscopic
Coefficient.—The fine earth, in Hilgard’s method, is exposed to an
atmosphere saturated with moisture for about twelve hours at the
ordinary temperature (60° F.) of the cellar in which the box should be
kept. The soil is sifted in a layer of about one millimeter thickness
upon glazed paper, on a wooden table, and placed in a small water-
tight covered box, twelve by nine by eight inches, in which there is
about an inch of water; the interior sides and cover of the box should
be lined with blotting paper, kept saturated with water, to insure the
saturation of the air.
Air-dried soil yields results varying from day to day to the extent of
as much as thirty to fifty per cent, nor have we any corrective formula
that would reduce such observations to absolute measure. Knop’s law,
that the absorption varies directly as the temperature, while applicable
to low percentages of saturation, is wide of the truth when saturation is
approached. The ordinary temperature of cellars will serve well in
these determinations without material correction.
After eight to twelve hours the earth is transferred as quickly as
possible, in the cellar, to a weighed drying tube and weighed. The tube
is then placed in a paraffin bath; the temperature gradually raised to
200° C. and kept there twenty to thirty minutes, a current of dry air
passing continually through the tube. It is then weighed again and the
loss in weight gives the hygroscopic moisture in saturated air.
The reason for adopting 200° C. as the temperature for drying
instead of 100° is that water will continue to come off from most soils
at the latter temperature for an indefinite time, a week or more, before
an approach to constancy of weight is attained; and that up to 200°
only an arbitrary limit can be assigned for the expulsion of hygroscopic
moisture. Moreover, the great majority of soils, especially those poor
in humus, will reabsorb moisture from a saturated atmosphere to the
full extent of that driven off at 200° C.
281. Estimation of the Absorption Power of Soils for
Aqueous Vapors.[181]—Method A.—The fine earth, ten to twenty
grams, is spread out on a surface of about twenty-five square
centimeters, and left for several days with the observation of the
temperature of the air and the loss of weight determined from time to
time. This evaporation is continued until the weight remains
practically constant. Afterwards by drying the sample at 100° the
amount of hygroscopic moisture is determined. A similar result can be
reached if the sample is first dried at 100°, or over sulfuric acid at
ordinary temperatures, and then the increase in weight observed
which the sample acquires on being exposed for several days to the
atmosphere under ordinary conditions. Soils with about the same
content of humus show variations in the power to absorb aqueous
vapors which are almost proportional to the amount of clay which they
contain. With the increase of humus substance, the power of the soil
for absorbing moisture is increased, so that a sandy soil which is rich
in humus often will retain as much moisture in an air-dried state as a
clay soil which is poor in humus. If the experiment is carried on by
drying over sulfuric acid instead of at 100°, the sample should be left
from four to seven days in order that a constant weight may be
reached. Even after this time the loss in weight is 0.2 to 1.5 per cent
less than when the sample is dried at 100°.
Method B.—In order to determine the amount of aqueous vapor
which a soil will absorb in an atmosphere saturated with the vapor the
following method is used:
The sample of air-dried soil in a flat dish of given surface; viz., about
twenty grams of soil to twenty-five square centimeters surface is
placed in a vessel over water without contact with the water, and the
whole of the apparatus is covered with a glass bell-jar. The sample is
weighed at intervals of six or eight hours until no appreciable increase
of weight is observed. An empty vessel of the same size and character
as that containing the soil is kept under the bell-jar, also in the same
conditions, so that any increase in weight by the deposition of
moisture on this vessel may be determined. This increase in weight is
to be deducted from the total increase in weight of the vessel and the
soil. Sandy and loamy soils become saturated in this manner in the
course of the first twenty-four hours and remain after that unchanged
in weight. Very clayey soils, and also those which are very rich in
humus, require a much longer time, three or four days even. In this
case it is better to take a smaller sample of the soil; viz., ten grams. The
temperature of the air within the glass vessel, of course, must be taken
into consideration.
Method C.—The same flat dish and the same quantity of soil as in
the other methods are taken in this one. The sample is left out over
night where it can be fully saturated with dew. The amount of dew
which appears on the bushes should be noted and also the temperature
of the air and the percentage of clouds in the sky. An experiment
should also be made on spots of earth which are entirely free from
vegetation in order that the difference in the amount of water
absorbed in places practically devoid of dew and in places where the
dew is abundant may be observed.
 Method D.—Deeper flat dishes should be used for this determination
so that the depth of soil contained in them shall be from one to three,
or even six centimeters. The sample of soil should be completely air-
dried and in a state of fine subdivision. The vessels containing the soil
should be placed in a locality saturated with aqueous vapor or in the
open air during the night where they are subjected to the influence of
the cooling of the atmosphere and the deposition of dew. Note should
be made of the different amounts of moisture absorbed by the layers of
earth of different thicknesses in a given time. Observation should also
be made of the depth to which the moisture sinks in the sample of soil
under consideration.
282. Estimation of the Absorption Power of the Soil for
Oxygen and Atmospheric Air.[182]—From fifty to one hundred
grams of air-dried soil are placed in a glass vessel of about 500 cubic
centimeters capacity, and the flask closed with a stopper after the
addition of enough water to make the percentage of moisture in the
soil about twenty. After from eight to fourteen days the air contained
in the vessel is analyzed for oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxid, with
special reference to the determination of how much oxygen has
disappeared and how much the carbon dioxid has been increased. As
an alternative method, twenty-five grams of the soil may be moistened
with tolerably concentrated potash lye in a small glass vessel, which is
itself joined with air-tight connections to an azotometer in which a
known volume of air is confined by quicksilver. The glass vessel is
frequently shaken during the progress of the experiment. The
diminution of the volume of air in the apparatus after from one to four
days gives approximately the quantity of oxygen absorbed.
283. General Method of Determining Absorption.—This
method, due to Freiherrn von Dobeneck,[183] is as follows: The soil, in a
state of fine powder, is dried at 100° to 105° to a constant weight. It is
then placed in an absorption tube of the following construction:
The absorption tube consists of a ᥩ shaped wide glass tube, both
ends of which are supplied with small glass tubes sealed upon the end
of the ᥩ tube, and those are furnished with tightly-ground glass stop-
cocks. Above these stop-cocks these small tubes are bent in opposite
directions at right angles. On the bend of the ᥩ is sealed another tube
which is furnished with a ground glass stopper. Through this opening
the ᥩ tube can be filled with the sample of soil. When the tube is filled,
the glass stopper inserted, and the two stop-cocks on the small tubes
closed, the contents of the tube are completely excluded from the
external atmosphere. Many of these tubes can be used at once so as to
hasten the progress of the work.
The tubes after being filled are placed in a drying oven with the stop-
cocks open. The stop-cocks are then closed before the tubes are
removed, when they are placed in a desiccator for cooling preparatory
to weighing. The weighed tubes are held in a tin box which can be
placed in a water-bath which is kept at a given temperature by means
of a thermostat. The top of the tin box should be hinged and made of a
thick non-conducting material so as to prevent any rapid change of
temperature within. On the inner side of the box a small thin-walled
glass tube is carried around four times. One end of this tube passes
through an opening in the side of the box by means of which it can be
connected with the gas apparatus outside. The other end of it is
connected directly with the absorption tubes.
The absorption tubes are so connected among themselves that when
ammonia or carbon dioxid is employed the gas passes through one of
the tubes before it can reach the next, and so on. For experiments with
water-gas, however, that is, air charged with aqueous vapor, the
arrangement must be different. While in the case of ammonia and
carbon dioxid the composition of the gas is not changed by passing
through the samples of soil, the case is quite different when air
charged with aqueous vapor passes through. In the latter case the
amount of aqueous vapor in the air would be notably lessened in
passing from sample to sample on account of the retention of a part of
the aqueous vapor by the soil. In this case, therefore, the saturated air,
after it has passed through the glass tube around the inside of the box
in order to reach the proper temperature, is conducted into a
receptacle of glass which has a number of connections equal to the
number of absorption tubes so that the saturated air can pass directly
into each one of them.
The gases which are to be used for the experiments are prepared in
proper apparatus and are forced through the samples of soil, either by
pressure as in the case of ammonia or carbon dioxid, or by means of
aspirators as in the case of air saturated with aqueous vapor.
 The carbon dioxid employed is purified by passing over sodium
carbonate and calcium chlorid.
The ammonia is prepared by the action of finely powdered lime on
ammonium chlorid, and is dried by passing over lime and sticks of
potassium hydroxid.
The air which is to be saturated with aqueous vapor, in order to
purify it from dust, carbon dioxid, and ammonia, is passed through
two flasks in which are contained respectively, diluted sulfuric acid
and potash lye. It is afterwards thoroughly saturated with aqueous
vapor at the temperature desired.
Various kinds of soil material may be employed as follows:
(1) Pure quartz sand.—Freed from all fine particles by subjection to
silt analysis, afterwards boiled with hydrochloric acid and washed with
water to free it from all clayey materials. The sand prepared in this way
should be passed through different sieves in order to prepare it in
different states of fineness.
(2) Quartz powder.—Prepared from pure quartz crystals by grinding
in an iron mortar.
(3) Kaolin.—Material such as is used in the manufacture of the finest
porcelain which, after being freed of all foreign matter, is rubbed to a
fine powder in a porcelain mortar.
(4) Humus.—Washed with ether and alcohol, boiled with
hydrochloric acid, washed, dried and reduced to a state of fine powder.
(5) Iron oxid.
(6) Calcium carbonate.—Precipitated, washed, and dried.
(7) Soil mixtures.—Prepared artificially by mixing the kaolin, quartz,
and humus, above mentioned.
The quantity of gas absorbed by each of these materials is
determined by filling the tubes, as above mentioned, with the dried
material. The content of each tube is previously determined by filling
with mercury and weighing. Having determined the weight of the
substance to the exclusion of the air contained within its pores, it is
treated with the gas in the apparatus described above and weighed
from time to time until no further increase of weight takes place.
The method of calculating the results is shown in the following
scheme:
 V = content of the absorption tube obtained by filling with mercury
and weighing.
P′ = weight of the empty tube filled with air at 100°.
pl = weight of the air in the tube (pl = V × specific gravity of the air
at 100°).
pt′ = weight of the tube (pt′ = P′ − pl).
P² (second weighing) = weight of the tube filled with the substance
with the included air at 100°.
vs = volume of the substance calculated according to the formula
vs = ss − specific
P² − P′
gravity of air.

ss = specific gravity of the substance.

vl = volume of the air in the flask filled with the substance (vl = V −
s
v ).
pl′ (weight of this included air) = vl × specific gravity.
ps = weight of the substance (pl = p² − pt′ − pl)
P³ = weight of the apparatus at the end of the experiment.
sg = specific gravity of the gas employed for saturation.
pg (weight of the gas remaining over the substance) = vl × sg.
pa (weight of the absorbed gas) = P³ − pt′ − ps − pg.
ps gram of substance absorbs pa gram of the gas and 100 grams of
substance would absorb 100ps× pa grams.
The specific gravities of the gases employed are calculated from the
tables given by Landolt and Börnstein in “Physical and Chemical
Tables,” page 5.
The specific gravity of the quartz sand employed was 2.639; of the
quartz powder, 2.622; of the kaolin, 2.503; of the humus, 1.462; of the
iron hydroxid, 3.728; and of the calcium carbonate, 2.678.
One liter of ammonia, at a pressure of 760 millimeters of mercury
and a temperature of 0°, weighs 0.7616 gram; one liter of carbon
dioxid, 1.9781 grams; one liter of aqueous vapor, 0.8064 gram; and
one liter of dried air, 1.2931 grams.
At a pressure of 720 millimeters, and at 20° temperature, a liter of
air saturated with aqueous vapor at 0° weighs 1.1383 grams; saturated
at 8.6°, 1.1362 grams; saturated at 10°, 1.1358 grams; saturated at 14°,
1.1340 grams; saturated at 18.2°, 1.1330 grams; saturated at 20°,
1.1321 grams; saturated at 30°, 1.1313 grams.
The general results of the experiments are as follows:

Absorption at 0°.

Aqueous vapor Ammonia. Carbon dioxid.

from saturated
air.
Grams. Cubic Grams. Cubic Grams. Cubic
cm.[H] cm.[H] cm.[H]
100 quartz 0.159 197 0.107 145 0.023 12
grams
„„ kaolin 2.558 3,172 0.721 947 0.329 166
„„ humus 15.904 19,722 18.452 24,228 2.501 1,263
„„ Fe₂(OH)₆ 15.512 19,236 4.004 5,275 6.975 3,526
„„ CaCO₃ 0.224 278 0.256 320 0.028 14

H. Reduced to 0° and 760 millimeters pressure mercury.

The foregoing methods will suffice to show the procedures to be
followed in estimating the maximum amount of any common gas or
vapor a given quantity of soil may be made to absorb. We pass next to
consider the quantities of gases or vapor soils in situ may hold.
284. Method of Boussingault and Lewey.[184]—This method is
the oldest and most simple procedure for estimating the nature of the
gases held in a soil in situ.
For the purpose of collecting the sample of gas from the soil a hole,
thirty to forty centimeters in depth, is dug, and a tube placed in it in a
vertical position, having on its lower extremity a bulb perforated with
fine holes. The hole is filled and the earth closely packed around the
tube which is left for twenty-four hours. At the end of that time the
tube is slowly aspirated until a volume of gas approaching from five to
ten liters is obtained.
Estimation of Carbon Dioxid.—The carbon dioxid in the sample of
gas is estimated by allowing it to bubble through a solution of barium
hydroxid.
Estimation of the Oxygen.—The oxygen is estimated in a separate
sample of the gas by means of potassium pyrogallate.
 The chief objection to this simple process is the uncertainty of being
able to obtain an average sample of the occluded gas. In digging the
hole and refilling, there must evidently be a considerable disturbance
of the original distribution of the gas or vapor.
The methods of Pettenkofer[185] and Aubry[186] are essentially like
that just described. Pettenkofer found the largest quantities of carbon
dioxid in the earth gases in July, August, and September, and the
smallest quantities in the winter months.
No greater detail concerning these methods of the direct aspiration
of the air is considered necessary inasmuch as the methods about to be
described, while more elaborate, are superior in accuracy to the older
methods mentioned. In general, in these experiments, it is deemed
sufficient to determine the carbon dioxid only.
285. Method of Schloesing.—The apparatus
used by Schloesing[187] in the collection of the soil gases
consists of a steel tube (Fig. 62) a little over one meter
in length, ten millimeters in external diameter, and
one and one-half to two millimeters in internal
diameter. The end which penetrates the soil is made
slightly conical for a distance of twenty-five to thirty
centimeters. By reason of the shape of the tube, when
it is driven into the soil all connection between the
orifice in the point of the tube and the external air is
prevented. The obstruction of the internal canal of the
tube is prevented by introducing a thread of steel
which penetrates the whole length of the tube. This
Figure 62.
thread, represented by A, B, C, D, is flush with the
Schloesing’s interior extremity of the tube at D. It extends for about
Soil-Tube for three centimeters above the upper end of the tube in
Collecting order to be easily handled when it is to be removed.
Gases. For the purpose of driving the tube into the soil its
upper part is covered with a cylindrical piece of steel,
EF, in the interior of which are freely engaged H and A. This head
piece rests upon a ring of steel, K. This ring is fastened solidly into the
tube. On striking the piece EF the tube and the steel wire in the center
are driven together into the soil. The tube is flattened at L and L′ in
order to be embraced by the key MM, the employment of which is
necessary in order to revolve the tube around its axis when it is being
driven into the soil. When the tube has been driven to the depth
desired, the steel wire is withdrawn and it is immediately connected at
H with the rubber tube N (Fig. 63) belonging to the system PQT, and
furnished with a pinch-cock X. The system PQT comprises the
following elements: PQT made of a capillary glass tube in the form of a
T. The lower end of the tube P is closed by the larger glass tube O,
sealing the end of P with a little mercury. O is held to P by the cork S,
which is attached firmly enough to prevent O from dropping off, but is
furnished with a canal in order to allow the air to flow in or out freely.
This system is connected with the system UV by the rubber connection
T. U is a glass vessel having the constrictions as indicated in its stem
above and below the bulb. V is a glass vessel of convenient size
connected with U by the rubber tubing as indicated. The capacity of
the cylindrical portion of U should be from fifteen to eighteen cubic
centimeters.
To take a sample of soil gas, V is lifted above U.
The air is driven from U and escapes through O,
which acts as a true valve. When the mercury has
completely filled U the pinch-cock X is opened and
V depressed gradually. The gas coming from the soil
is thus collected in U. A few cubic centimeters of the
soil gas are collected in this way, the pinch-cock X is
again closed and V is raised in order to drive the
whole of the contents of U again through O. In this
way the whole of the air which the capillary vessel
originally contained is removed and all parts of it
remain filled with soil gas. Two or three operations,
using from five to ten centimeters of soil gas in all,
will be sufficient to completely free the apparatus Figure 63.
from its original content of air. U is then entirely Schloesing’s
filled by depressing V, and it is then hermetically Apparatus for
sealed at the two constricted points by means of an Collecting Gases
alcohol lamp. The sealed tube can then be from Soil.
transported to the laboratory and its contents
subjected to eudiometric analysis.
Without displacing the tube from the soil, several samples of gas can
be taken from the same spot. A sufficient number of the bulbs V
should be at hand to hold the required number of samples. Instead of
submitting the sample to eudiometric analysis it is usually sufficient to
determine the quantity of carbon dioxid which it contains, inasmuch
as numerous experiments have shown that in 100 parts of soil gas the
oxygen and carbon dioxid together constitute twenty-one parts. No
appreciable trace of marsh gas, or other combustible gas, has yet been
detected in ordinary arable soils. These gases have only been found in
special soils from marshes, in the neighborhood of gas wells, etc., and
not in arable soils.
286. Apparatus for Estimating the
Carbon Dioxid.—The apparatus used for
determining the carbon dioxid in
Schloesing’s work consists of the apparatus
shown in Fig. 64. A represents a glass vessel
surrounded by a jacket of glass, full of
water, and sealed on its lower part to the
tube BC of about six millimeters internal
diameter. On its upper part it is sealed to
the capillary tube D. The tube BC is
graduated from C in hundredths of the
Figure 64. volume of DAC, which volume is about
twelve cubic centimeters. On its lower part
Schloesing’s Apparatus for it is connected by a rubber tube with a
Determination of Carbon
Dioxid. reservoir F which is capable of being raised
or lowered. GHK are capillary tubes
connected together by the rubber tubes L
and M, which are furnished with pinch-cocks. The tube G is connected
to a vacuum by the rubber tube N. The rubber tube should be of very
small internal diameter and from forty to fifty centimeters in length.
To the tube H are sealed, at right angles, the branch D and another
branch O. This last dips into a little mercury which the tube P contains.
It serves as a valve, permitting the exit of the gases but not their
entrance. The tube K carries some lines engraved on its inferior part
and is sealed to the system of the two bulbs Q and R. The bulb Q
contains a concentrated solution of potash. It carries a number of
pieces of glass tubing for the purpose of increasing the surface of the
potash solution.
All the parts of the apparatus are fixed upon a rectangular board,
nineteen centimeters broad by twenty centimeters long. This forms
one of the faces of a wooden box to which it is hinged and which serves
for the transportation of the apparatus in a vertical position. The
graduation of the tube BC is recorded behind this tube upon a card
fixed upon the board. By means of these two graduations, the height of
the mercury in the tube BC is most easily read, even when the tube is
not perfectly vertical. Each one of the pinch-cocks L and M, on its
upper part is fixed in a sort of guard which prevents it from being
displaced laterally during the processes of the manipulation, thus
avoiding all danger of breakage.
After the operation is finished a little air is sent into Q in such a
manner as to sensibly lower the level of the solution of potash, and the
upper extremity of R is closed with a rubber stopper. Afterward, the
apparatus can be transported without any danger of the potash
becoming engaged in the tube K and reaching the measuring tank A.
To proceed to the analysis, a stake is driven into the soil to which all
of the apparatus can be fixed. At the side of the stake the apparatus for
taking the sample, already described, is driven into the soil and this
apparatus is connected by the tube N with the apparatus for
determining the carbon dioxid. The pinch-cocks L and M being closed,
F is lifted until the mercury which runs from it fills A and approaches
D. During this time the air which the apparatus contains has been
driven out through O. The tube NGD is freed from air by opening the
pinch-cock L, lowering F and drawing into A the gas coming from the
soil; afterward closing L and driving out the gas through O. After two
or three rinsings of this kind, which employ altogether only ten to
twelve cubic centimeters, the gas which is to be analyzed is sucked into
A. For this purpose F is lowered until the mercury in the tube BC is
very near C. The pinch-cock L is closed and M opened. The reservoir F
is displaced little by little by pressing lightly against the rectangular
board in order to give it greater firmness in such a way as to fix the
level of the mercury exactly at C, and the line is noticed where the
solution of potash in K stands. The gas contained in the apparatus is
under a pressure, the difference of which from the external pressure is
represented by the column of the potash solution between the mark
just noticed and the level of the same solution in the bulb R. In order
to absorb the carbon dioxid, F is lifted until the mercury stands
between D and E. The gas thus passes from A into Q. It gives up
immediately its carbon dioxid to the potash solution. It is then made to
come again into A, and afterward a second time into Q in order to free
it from the last trace of dioxid. Finally it is made to return to A and F is
kept at such a height that the potash solution maintains in the tube K
the same level as at the commencement of the operation. The gas is
then at the same pressure to which it was subjected before absorption.
The level of the mercury is then read on BC. At the time the apparatus
is used, the measuring tube A should be slightly moist. If it is not so, a
small quantity of water should be introduced which is afterward
rejected, but which leaves a sufficient quantity of moisture upon the
internal walls of A. In this way the gas will always, before or after
absorption of carbon dioxid, be saturated with vapor of water, and the
figure read in the last place upon the tube BC represents the
percentage of carbon dioxid in 100 parts of the gas extracted from the
soil supposed to be saturated with vapor at the temperature of the
experiment.
During the course of the analysis, the temperature of the measuring
flask, which is almost entirely surrounded with water, does not vary
sensibly, but in a series of experiments which are executed at different
times, the temperature of the measuring apparatus, which is that of
the ambient air, may change much. It may oscillate between 10° to 25°,
and exceptionally between 0° and 30°, whence there are notable
variations in the tension of the vapor of the gas measured. If it should
be desired to calculate to 100 parts of dry gas the observations made at
30° upon 100 parts of saturated gas, it would be necessary to increase
the percentage of carbon dioxid by about ¹⁄₂₅ of its value. It is noticed
that with the apparatus described above, the gas upon which the
estimation is really conducted comprises not only that which the
measuring apparatus contains from E to C before the absorption of the
carbon dioxid, but also the small quantity which remains in the
capillary tube KME at the moment when closing the pinch-cock M,
after the second rinsing, the gas from the soil is aspired into EAC. On
the other hand, there is left in the same tube KME, when the final
reading is made, some gas which belongs to that which has been
measured at the end. These two small gaseous portions which we
consider in the tube KME to be sensibly equal, do not contain any
carbon dioxid and may be left out of consideration. That is why the
volume of the measuring apparatus is limited to E and the graduation
of the tube BC is in hundredths of the volume comprised from E to C.
In reality the two portions are not absolutely equal because the two
successive levels of the potash solution, which limit them in the tube K,
are not absolutely identical. These two levels can differ in such a
manner as to correspond to a volume of about ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ of the measuring
apparatus. Thus the estimation is really made upon a volume of gas
which may be greater or less by ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ than the volume of EAC; whence
there might result an error of ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ in the estimation of the carbon
dioxid, an error which is wholly negligible.
As a result of numerous analyses it is concluded, first, that the
oxygen exists normally in the atmosphere of soils in large proportion;
second, very probably the gaseous atmosphere of arable soils, to a
depth of sixty centimeters, contains scarcely one per cent of carbon
dioxid and about twenty per cent of oxygen; third, the highest
percentages of carbon dioxid correspond to epochs of highest
temperature and periods of greatest calm; fourth, the proportion of
carbon dioxid increases ordinarily with the depth at which the samples
are taken. This disposition of the carbon dioxid would appear almost
necessary, since near the surface the internal atmosphere is almost
constantly diluted by external air by virtue of diffusion. Fifth, from one
epoch to another the composition of the atmosphere of the soil can
undergo considerable variation.
287. Determination of Diffusion of Carbon Dioxid in Soil.—
The method proposed by Hannén[188] is a convenient one to use in
studying the rate of diffusion of carbon dioxid in soils. A large Woulff’s
bottle with three necks serves for the reception of the gas. The two
smaller outer necks of the bottle carry two glass tubes bent outwards
and provided with stop-cocks. One of these passes to near the bottom
of the bottle and the other just through the stopper. The middle tubule
of the bottle is of a size to give in section an area of about twenty-two
square centimeters. It is made with a heavy rim two centimeters wide
and plane ground. This rim carries a plane-ground glass plate with a
circular perforation in one-half of it, of the size of the opening in the
central tubule of the bottle. A glass cylinder, carrying a fine wire-gauze
diaphragm near the lower end, fits with a ground-glass edge air-tight,
over this aperture, being held in position by a brass clamp. The
ground-glass plate moves air-tight between the cylinder and the bottle,
so that the cylinder can be brought into connection with the bottle or
cut off therefrom without in any way opening the bottle to the air. The
plate and all ground movable surfaces should be well lubricated with
vaseline.
The experiment is carried on as follows: The glass cylinder is filled
with the soil to be tested, closed above with a rubber stopper carrying a
gas tube, and then by moving the perforated-glass plate brought into
connection with the bottle. The side tube, with short arm inside the
bottle, is then closed, and carbon dioxid introduced through the other
lateral tube until the gas passing from the tube at the top of the
cylinder is pure carbon dioxid.
The lateral tube is then closed and the bottle is placed in a water-
bath and kept at a constant temperature of 20°. When the temperature
within and without the apparatus is the same the reading of the
barometer is made, the stopper removed from the top of the cylinder,
and the process of diffusion allowed to begin. After from six to ten
hours the glass plate is moved so as to break the connection between
the cylinder and bottle. The carbon dioxid remaining in the bottle is
driven out by a stream of dry, pure air. The air is allowed to pass
through the apparatus for about ten hours. The carbon dioxid driven
out is collected in an absorption apparatus and weighed. The
absorption apparatus should consist of a series of Geissler potash
absorption bulbs and finally a ᥩ form soda-lime tube. In front of the
absorption apparatus is placed a drying bulb containing sulfuric acid.
Inasmuch as the temperature and pressure can be readily determined,
the weight of carbon dioxid obtained is easily calculated to volume.
The weight of 1,000 cubic centimeters of carbon dioxid at 0° and
760 millimeters pressure is 1.96503 grams. Therefore one milligram is
equivalent to 0.5089 cubic centimeter of the gas. The volume of the
bottle should be carefully determined by calibration with water. The
results should be calculated to cubic centimeters per square centimeter
of exposed surface in ten hours. The depth of the soil layer is
conveniently taken at twenty centimeters.
288. Statement of Results.—
The Soil Packed Loosely in the Diffusion Tube.
 Diffusion Time, Ten Hours.

Diameter of Weight Pure carbon Carbon Cubic

soil of soil dioxid at dioxid at centimeters of
particles, taken, beginning of end of carbon dioxid
millimeters. grams. experiment, experiment, diffused for
cubic cm. cubic cm. each square
cm.
0.01–0.071 520 2549.4 1230.3 59.9
0.071–0.114 550 2545.9 1269.2 58.0
0.114–0.171 590 2556.4 1354.2 54.6
0.171–0.250 620 2538.9 1336.1 54.6
0.250–0.500 660 2532.0 1374.5 52.6
0.500–1.000 680 2528.2 1440.2 49.5
1.000–2.000 690 2496.6 1396.9 50.0
Mixture of the 720 2514.3 1572.5 42.8
above

In greater detail the calculation and statement of the results may be

illustrated by the following data:
In the first experiment given in the above table the diameter of the
soil particles varied from 0.010 to 0.071 millimeter. The weight of soil
in the diffusion tube was 520 grams. The volume of gas, at 0° and 760
millimeters, before the diffusion began was 2549.4 cubic centimeters.
The volume of carbon dioxid under standard conditions remaining
after ten hours of diffusion was 1230.3 cubic centimeters. This volume
is calculated from the weight of carbon dioxid obtained in the potash
bulbs, each milligram being equal to 0.5089 cubic centimeter of
carbon dioxid. The volume of carbon dioxid diffused is therefore
2549.4 − 1230.3 = 1319.1 cubic centimeters. The per cent of carbon
dioxid diffused is 1319.1 ÷ 2549.4 = 51.74. The volume of carbon dioxid
diffused for each square centimeter of cross section of the diffusion
tube is 1319.1 ÷ 22 = 59.9 cubic centimeters.
The carbon dioxid should be passed long enough to secure complete
expulsion of the air before the determination is commenced.
289. General Conclusions.—The general results of the
experiments with the diffusion apparatus to determine the effect of the
physical condition of the soil upon the rate of diffusion are as follows:
 1. The diffusion of carbon dioxid through the soil is, at a constant
temperature, chiefly dependent upon the pores in the cross section of
the column of soil. Therefore, the absolute quantity of the diffused gas
is greater the larger the total volume of the pores and vice versa.
2. Every diminution of the volume of the pores, whether secured by
pressure of the soil or by an increase in the moisture thereof, is
followed by a decrease in the volume of diffused gas. The giving up of
the carbon dioxid present in the soil atmosphere to the upper
atmosphere by the method of diffusion is therefore the less the finer
the soil is, the more compressed the soil particles are, and the larger
the water capacity of the sample and vice versa.
3. The quantity of diffused carbon dioxid is diminished according to
the measure of compression to which the soil is subjected but is not
strictly proportional to the height of the soil layer.
4. In soils in which rain water percolates slowly the diffusion of the
carbon dioxid on account of this property is depressed to a greater or
less extent.
 AUTHORITIES CITED IN PART FIFTH.
179. Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
1872, p. 328.
180. Die Landwirtschaftlichen Versuchs-Stationen, 1889, S. 197.
181. König, Untersuchung Landwirtschaftlich und Gewerblich Wichtiger Stoffe,
Ss. 64–66.
182. König, op cit. supra.
183. Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Agricultur-Physik, Band 15, S. 190.
184. Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Tome 37, 1853; Encyclopedie Chimique,
Tome 4, p. 154.
185. Zeitschrift für Biologie, Band 7, S. 395 and Band 9, S. 250.
186. Jahresbericht für Agriculturchemie, Band 1, S. 160.
187. Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1891, Sixième Série, Tome 23, pp. 362, et
seq.
188. Op. cit. 5, 1892, Ss. 8, et seq.
 PART SIXTH.

290. Preliminary Considerations.—The sample of soil intended for

chemical analysis should consist of the fine earth which has passed at least a
one-millimeter mesh sieve and subsequently been completely air-dried.
According to Petermann the air-drying of a soil should continue for about four
days for an ordinary arable soil, and about six days for one very rich in organic
matter. With peat and muck soils I have found that ten or twelve days with
frequent stirring, even when in thin layers, are necessary to attain approximately
a constant weight.
The soil is conveniently spread on a zinc or other metal sheet of sufficient area
so that the layer will be only one or two centimeters in thickness. The weight
before and after desiccation will give the percentage of moisture lost on air-
drying, which, of course, will depend chiefly on the degree of saturation of the
sample when taken and the atmospheric conditions prevailing during drying.
If samples of soil are taken in very dry times it is often necessary to moisten
them with distilled water in order to prepare them properly for air-drying.
The quantity of hygroscopic water which the sample loses at 100°–105° should
be determined, and all subsequent calculations of the percentages of the various
constituents be based on the water-free material. When a soil which has been
dried at 100°–105° to a constant weight is heated to 140°–150° it loses
additional weight not due to loss of water of constitution. A part of this loss may
be due to hygroscopic moisture which is not given off at 100°–105°, and a part
may be hydrocarbons, or other easily volatile organic or inorganic bodies. Before
estimating the total loss on ignition it is recommended by most chemists to dry
at 140°–150°. The samples of soil, however, intended for chemical examination
should never be dried beyond the point which is reached by exposure in thin
layers at ordinary room temperatures. The state of aggregation, degree of
solubility, and general properties of a soil, may be so changed by absolute
desiccation as to render the subsequent results of chemical investigation
misleading. In the methods which follow the actual processes employed have
been given, which in some instances transgress the general principle stated
above, but in all cases standard and approved methods are given in detail, even
if some of their provisions seem unnecessary or imperfect.
291. Order of Examination.—First of all in a chemical study of the soil
should be determined, its reaction (with litmus), its water-holding power in the
air-dried state (hygroscopicity), its content of combined water (giving hydrous