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Concept
Flap (aeronautics)
Summary
A flap is a high-lift device used to reduce the stalling speed of an aircraft wing at a given weight. Flaps are usually mounted on the wing trailing edges of a fixed-wing aircraft. Flaps are used to reduce the take-off distance and the landing distance. Flaps also cause an increase in drag so they are retracted when not needed.
The flaps installed on most aircraft are partial-span flaps; spanwise from near the wing root to the inboard end of the ailerons. When partial-span flaps are extended they alter the spanwise lift distribution on the wing by causing the inboard half of the wing to supply an increased proportion of the lift, and the outboard half to supply a reduced proportion of the lift. Reducing the proportion of the lift supplied by the outboard half of the wing is accompanied by a reduction in the angle of attack on the outboard half. This is beneficial because it increases the margin above the stall of the outboard half, maintaining aileron effectiveness and reducing the likelihood of asymmetric stall, and spinning.
Extending the wing flaps increases the camber or curvature of the wing, raising the maximum lift coefficient or the upper limit to the lift a wing can generate. This allows the aircraft to generate the required lift at a lower speed, reducing the minimum speed (known as stall speed) at which the aircraft will safely maintain flight. The increase in camber also increases the wing drag, which can be beneficial during approach and landing, because it allows the aircraft to descend at a steeper angle. For most aircraft configurations, a useful side effect of flap deployment is a decrease in aircraft pitch angle which lowers the nose thereby improving the pilot's view of the runway over the nose of the aircraft during landing. Another side effect however, depending on the type of flap, location on the wing and deployment speed during their extension, is that the flaps will cause the indicated (or relative to the unchanged airfoil) angle of attack to lower within a short time due to an increase in nose-down pitching moment which is characteristic to all trailing-edge flaps, as well as leading-edge flaps, then followed by a nose rise (pitch-up) due to the increase in lift, thus obscuring the pilot's view of the runway if no action is taken over the pitch inputs.
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