When aircraft were first invented, they evoked man’s fantasy. Planes allowed man to fly in the open sky. However, being able to fly like birds was not easy. In order to fly, airplanes need to overcome the strong force of gravity and move forward at the same time. Just like a bird’s natural body is adapted to flight, all plane components are made to allow it to fly. The airplane’s turbine, rudder, wings, and propeller are designed specifically to allow movement through the air.
4 Essential Components in Airplanes
1. A Combustor
A combustor, as the name suggests, is the area of the engine where the fuel and the compressed air from the compressor are ignited. Since this chamber burns the fuel and air, this is the hottest part of the engine. The fuel from this chamber feeds into the turbine section.
The combustor is the part that produces the maximum emissions from a gas engine. The exhaust includes gasses like oxides of carbon, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, etc. However, the emissions can be reduced to a great extent by improving the ways in which the fuel enters the combustion chamber. More modern aircraft have mechanisms to improve the mixing of fuel with compressed air to reduce the emission of harmful gaseous pollutants.
2. A Compressor
A compressor is a device that compresses air or any gas to reduce its volume and thus increase its pressure. The reduction in volume happens because the gas or air is made to move to progressively smaller compartments through a series of blades. The compression step is crucial as it makes the air more suitable for combustion in the combustor.
3. The Turbine
The turbine of an aircraft has multiple rotating blades driven by the mixture of air and fuel generated from the combustion chamber. The turbine continuously harnesses energy from a combustion chamber, and the exhaust that leaves the turbine produces a thrust that powers the plane into motion. Continuously harnessing the energy and producing thrust is not an easy task. Hence valves and seals are often used to upkeep the levels of efficiency.
Many valves are used in turbine-like air bleed valves, ball valves, etc. Ball valves are also used in air turbines. To understand the utility of a ball valve, it is important to understand how does ball valve work. A ball valve has a spherical ball-shaped structure that has two openings on the opposite end. When in position, the openings align with the pipe and allow an uninterrupted flow of the fluid. When the valve is in a closed position, then the open ends do not align with the pipe, thus blocking the flow.
Ball valves provide tight sealing and can work efficiently in a turbine’s high temperature and pressure. Air bleed valves are used to drive out the excess air that is produced by the compressor during starting and stopping of the engine.
4. Piston Engine
Some airplanes use a piston engine instead of a turbine engine. In piston engines, there are multiple pistons that move up and down in a cylinder to create a rotatory motion in a propeller to produce thrust. The propeller works like a screw where a rotatory motion is used to produce a movement in the forward direction.
Most airplane pistons are made of aluminum alloys or cast iron. Aluminum alloys have high thermal conductivity and weights less than cast iron. Cast iron, on the other hand, has more strength than aluminum. Moreover, pistons, like most aircraft engine components, have a highly complicated design.
Mold tooling design involves creating detailed and complex designs for molds where the plastic resin can be filled in during injection molding. The design of the mold is crucial, as is the efficiency of the plastic part, be it a piston or a piston ring. Plastic injection molding is rapidly being adopted across all industries due to its ability to produce complex designs cost-effectively.
Piston rings are attached to prevent the leakage of gas pressure from the combustion chamber. PTFE piston rings are used because they have a high sealing capacity, and it also helps to reduce the wear and tear of the pistons.
Conclusion
The engine of an aircraft has a complicated design to allow the plane to fly. Apart from the engine, the plane has a rudder that controls the aircraft’s rotations along the vertical axis. Likewise, the wing is complex; it has a system that acts like a car brake to reduce the lift, called spoilers. The small side wings on the main wing are called ailerons that control the motion around the longitudinal axis.
Today the biggest flights are able to carry more than 500 tons of weight when filled to their complete capacity. Planes can fly for long distances, and the longest flight to date is 21000 km. The airplane is an engineering marvel and one of man’s greatest inventions of all time.
